Primal Printing
The Printing service made by students for students. Allows for easy access to paper coursebooks in the age of digital learning.
Overview
Primal Printing is a student-led initiative that provides affordable and accessible printing services for course materials. In an era where digital resources are prevalent, we recognized the need for physical copies of textbooks and notes, especially for students who prefer traditional learning methods.
The Problem
(from the Primal Printing website)
Ryan is kinda old fashioned when it comes to his studies. He always preferred to have a physical copy of a coursebook. He swears that paper is better!
We all thought he was crazy until we found that several studies have reported that although reading and writing on a computer saves time because it is a faster process, taking notes by hand and reading from a physical book improves students’ memorization, word recognition and conceptual understanding!
However, Ryan’s university only provided physical coursebooks for a small handful of courses, and they were often overpriced. So, Ryan reached out to third-party print shops for the coursebooks which his university didn’t provide, only to find that they were even more expensive than the university!
So, Ryan took matters into his own hands and created a company to print and bind coursebooks and notes for students at a fraction of the usual cost.
This is cool and all, but the problem is that so many students are in the same boat as Ryan, and they all want the amazing printing service that Primal Printing provides. Hopefully it’s not hard to see that Ryan handling all of these requests manually would not scale well, and so Primal Printing needed a way to automate the process of accepting orders and printing coursebooks.
The Solution
Sometimes a simple solution is the best solution, and in this case, Primal Printing needed a simple way to accept orders and print coursebooks. I created a simple web application that allows students to place orders for coursebooks or notes. The application is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, allowing students to easily navigate through the process of placing an order.
After orders were placed, the students would recieve next steps on how to collect their orders, and that would be all from their side. The orders were directly updated on a Google Sheet, which allowed Ryan to easily manage the orders and print the coursebooks.
Tech Stack
- Firebase storage for file uploads
- Google APIs for Google Sheets integration
- Stripe for payment processing
Results
Every semester, Primal Printing carries out hundreds of print jobs from students who are looking for affordable and accessible printing services. The primal printing website has been a big driver in keeping everything organised, and ensuring that everyone gets their coursebooks on time.