Carnegie Mellon Qatar

February 1st, 2007

Frontend Developer

Michael Krotscheck

Backend Developer

SreeRaghu Hanumolu

Designer

Michelle Leonette

Avatar Designer

Ed Shin

Information Architect

Rob Miller

Project Manager

Mark Kubaska

Carnegie Mellon Qatar wanted to increase exposure of their undergraduate program, so asked us to host an essay contest to solicit interest. The winner of this contest would receive a full scholarship to the undergraduate business or computer science programs offered there, while runners-up would receive a half-scholarship.

All entrants would be placed on a map of the world, and their ideas made public after the last submission date of the sweepstakes. Not only this, but each person would be allowed to customize an avatar to represent themselves to the world.

The solution was a hybrid of DHTML, Flash and .Net. The map piece and the data queries were Flash communicating via autogenerated xml with a database backend, while the avatar generator allowed selection via javascript and a preview paperdoll object built in Flash.