PenguinDev

Product concept and interactive demo

Orzu Platform

A public pitch and role-switching product demo that makes a student-network platform inspectable from student, employer, and administrator perspectives.

The problem

Partners had to understand an ambitious community platform without relying on slides, and be able to inspect how its main roles would actually work.

Open pitch site Open interactive demo

Built with

A Angular angular.dev TS TypeScript typescriptlang.org ▲ Vercel vercel.com

Also covered

  • Product prototyping
  • Role-based UX
  • Pitch storytelling
Client
Uzbekistan's Students Union
Year
2026
Role
Product concept, UX structure, pitch site, and demo implementation
Status
Pitch site and interactive demo live

Screens

  • Orzu student workspace shown on desktop and mobile
    Student, employer, adminEach workspace opens without credentials, so the product can be judged from all three sides.
    The claim, up frontA verified student network rather than a job board, stated before you choose a role.
  • The Orzu opportunity board showing roles with match scores and filters
  • The employer application board with candidates arranged across review stages
  • The multi-step opportunity posting form beside a live preview of the role card
  • The Orzu messenger panel open over the student network page
  • A public student profile with a summary, education, skills and community statistics
  • The Orzu admin dashboard with network totals and growth charts
  • The admin verification desk listing accounts with role, region and status

Student workspace

The student workspace, one of the three role perspectives the demo lets a partner inspect.

Opportunity board

Roles with match scores, filters, and Save or Apply in one place.

Application review board

Six fixed stages, with an applicant drawer on every card.

Posting a role

A guided form with live preview. Publishing seeds the review pipeline.

Cross-role messenger

An inbox that opens on any page, without leaving it.

Public profile

What a member publishes: a summary, education, focus areas and contact routes.

Admin workspace

Users, groups, opportunities, content, moderation, events, and partnerships.

Verification desk

The account queue an administrator works through, by priority and status.

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System

Student workspace Employer workspace Admin workspace Shared network Opportunity pipeline Public pitch inspect inspect inspect coordinate govern Three roles around one opportunity network Student workspace Employer workspace Admin workspace Shared network Opportunity pipeline Public pitch inspect inspect inspect coordinate govern Three roles around one opportunity network

Features

Opportunity board with match scores

Roles with match scores, filters, and Save or Apply in one place.

Kanban employer application review

Six fixed stages, with an applicant drawer on every card.

Multi-step opportunity posting wizard

A guided form with live preview. Publishing seeds the review pipeline.

Floating cross-role messenger

An inbox that opens on any page, without leaving it.

Live-filtering student network

Cards filter live by country, university and field.

Decisions and tradeoffs

Problems we hit

Stakeholder access gate without application auth
Problem

The deployed demo needed stakeholder-only access without building real application authentication.

Our solution

Fail-closed edge middleware

A Vercel edge middleware enforcing HTTP Basic Auth. Missing environment variables return 503 rather than falling through to an open page, and invalid credentials return 401.

Cross-role message leakage in shared mock data
Problem

The messenger demo uses one shared mock data graph, so each role had to see only the threads permitted to it.

Our solution

Point-of-view message histories

Direct-message histories are POV-specific: the same thread does not expose the full transcript to a role that is not a participant.

Profile personalization without backend persistence
Problem

A key stakeholder was to see the demo personalized with their own name and photo, but the demo has no backend.

Our solution

Preview locally, reset on reload

The profile edit sheet previews changes locally and shows save feedback, but resets on reload so the demo does not imply data was stored.

CDK dependency exceeding the bundle budget
Problem

Adding the Angular CDK for the employer Kanban board pushed the production build past the active 500 kB initial-bundle warning threshold.

Our solution

Widen the budget, keep the warning

The error budget was explicitly widened to keep the demo deployable on Vercel, while retaining the warning so the overage stays visible.

Decisions we made

Connected role journeys, not mock screens
Decision

The main product decision was to demonstrate breadth through connected role journeys rather than a collection of unrelated mock screens.

Why we made it

An employer opportunity should make sense beside the student's career pipeline and the administrator's governance surface. The system map makes those relationships explicit.

The demo does not hide behind credentials
Decision

The second decision was to keep the prototype easy to enter.

Why we made it

Authentication buttons and role selection communicate the intended identity model, but the demo itself does not hide behind credentials. That lowers friction for a pitch audience and lets a technical reviewer inspect the product structure directly.

Illustrative numbers, clearly labeled
Decision

Because this is a concept and demo rather than a production launch, its numbers and activity states are illustrative.

Why we made it

The portfolio labels it accordingly and does not imply live adoption.

Next

Contact

Let's talk.

For professional opportunities, collaborations, or selected freelance work.

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