Digital Letters & Education Platform

Outcomes

Context

Consumer virality and classroom workflows share infrastructure but not UX goals — boundaries matter.

Challenge

A consumer letters experience needed delightful creation/sharing flows while a parallel education module required sessions, grading, PDF/CSV export, and analytics — without collapsing into an unfocused app.

Approach

We shipped a Next.js 14 frontend and NestJS API with PostgreSQL and S3-compatible storage. Product features included letters, anonymous/scheduled opens, QR, collections, and a teacher area for sessions and assessment exports. Docker and mail testing supported the delivery loop.

Architecture

Next.js 14, NestJS API, PostgreSQL, S3-compatible object storage, Docker, Mailpit for email QA.

Scope

• —Letter creation and sharing
• —Scheduled and anonymous opens
• —QR access
• —Teacher sessions
• —Grading and exports
• —Analytics

Constraints

• —Consumer UX must stay lightweight
• —Education features need exportable artifacts
• —Storage for media/documents

Solution highlights

• —Clear API modules for consumer vs education concerns
• —Object storage for durable letter/media assets
• —Export pipelines for teachers

Technologies

Results

• —Consumer letter journeys with scheduling and QR entry points
• —Teacher module for sessions, grading, and exports
• —Analytics hooks for product learning
• —Implementation plan completed across all defined delivery steps

Lessons learned

• —Consumer delight and education compliance can share a stack — not a single screen taxonomy.
• —QR and scheduling are product features with real backend state.
• —Finish the plan you wrote; partial social products feel broken.