Case study · Matching platform
Outbounder — a regional work-placement matching platform
Two interfaces
public site and operator console, one flow
Post → apply → select
the whole journey, not the landing page
Live
open it in your browser
Challenge
Two audiences pull a matching platform in opposite directions: applicants want a place that feels worth their time, while the organisation running the programme needs dense operational screens for applicant review and selection — and both sides have to be visibly part of the same product.
Solution
An editorial register for the public side — cream ground, deep green accent, serif headlines — paired with a deliberately contrasting white console for operators, with the applicant journey built end to end: selection timeline on the posting page, an application form pre-filled from the profile, and status visible in the account of the applicant.
Results
A platform where a reviewer can follow one posting all the way from publication to a selected applicant and then look at the same event from the operator side, including view, application, and selection rate figures.
- Client
- Self-initiated studio project
- Scope
- Public platform · operator console
- Stack
- Next.js · React · TypeScript · Tailwind
The problem is connection and operation, not listings
Placement programmes outside the capital rarely fail for lack of good projects. They fail because the good ones are buried among scattered postings, and because the organisation running them collects applications by email and manages selection in a spreadsheet. Building only the applicant-facing site solves half of that and leaves the harder half untouched, so the console was scoped in from the start: programmes contain postings, postings collect applicants, applicants carry status and evaluation, and the dashboard reports view, application, and selection rates.
Region has a texture, and a gradient is not it
A platform about specific places cannot illustrate them with abstract shapes. Photographs of the actual regions are self-hosted and used at full weight, because a CSS gradient standing in for a coastal town tells an applicant exactly how much attention the rest of the product will get. The editorial layout — generous margins, serif headlines, a single deep accent — is there to let those images carry the page rather than compete with it.
Built to be judged as a working screen
This is a self-initiated studio project, built to our own brief and held to production standards: both interfaces complete, the journey connected end to end, and the whole thing deployed to a URL anyone can open. With a client, the same scope runs longer, because your review rounds and your real selection rules are part of the build. What transfers is the approach — decide the operational half early, and let people click through it rather than read about it.
Have a platform where the operator side matters as much as the public one? That is the half we would build first.
sww@celis.co.kr