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7/19/2026
Launchpad Luton
Find work that fits you — right here in Luton.
A Project Made By
Submitted for
How can advancements in tech improve healthcare?
Built At
Femetronics x Momentum Hackathon #1
Hosted By
Presentation Link:
https://1drv.ms/p/c/434C38C42D0A97F9/IQDWWN2Gwg4KT6dga9aBo3zLAZL_2UdQSa5IgShzABq9My0?e=Rp3pRa
Syeda Fatima Kaazmi was the Project Manager for this project Fatima also helped build the website along with Sarah Fatima.
Fatima and Sarah built the websites front and back and also prepared the information for the presentation along with recording the demo. Everyone researched information for the project learning about the market.
Amtul and Rakhi helped gather information and made the logo for the project.
Framing the Problem
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Young people in Luton face a fragmented path into work. National job boards drown them in irrelevant listings, while local opportunities from anchor employers such as Vauxhall, London Luton Airport, the NHS and nearby logistics hubs are hard to discover. At the same time, apprenticeships, volunteering, webinars and short courses exist in silos, so a young person rarely sees the full picture of how to move from where they are now to a real pay cheque.
There is also a growing anxiety around AI replacing entry-level roles. Many young people hear that "robots will take our jobs" but do not know which human skills still matter or how to build them. The result is indecision, missed applications and talented people leaving the town because they think opportunity is elsewhere.
Who does it affect parents, careers advisers and youth workers who need a trusted, local resource to point them toward.
Idea Explanation
What is your idea?
Launchpad Luton is a single, mobile-first web platform that brings together jobs, apprenticeships and upskilling opportunities in one place. It is built specifically for Luton, not the whole UK, and it uses two interactive tools to reduce overwhelm:
Career Discovery Quiz — a short, weighted quiz that matches a user’s interests and working style to local career categories such as Digital, Healthcare, Engineering, Creative, Logistics and Retail. It then surfaces live, relevant opportunities from the board.
Future You: Luton — a branching narrative game where users play through realistic work scenarios in Retail, Logistics or Design. Each branch ends with a real Luton pathway and a reflection on where human judgement still beats automation.
Upskilling Hub — a purple-themed directory for volunteering, webinars, workshops, online work experience and courses, with clear summaries, requirements, gains and costs.
How does it fix the problem?
By filtering everything around Luton, the platform removes the noise of national boards. By adding a quiz and a game, it turns passive browsing into active discovery. The game also tackles the AI-anxiety problem head-on: instead of abstract warnings, it shows users in concrete situations why empathy, problem solving, local knowledge and teamwork still matter. Every piece of content points toward a real next step, whether that is an application, a course sign-up or a volunteering enquiry.
Implementation
How do all the pieces fit together?
The frontend is a React application built with TanStack Start, Tailwind CSS and TypeScript. It uses a single-page layout with four views — Jobs, Apprenticeships, Game and Upskilling — controlled by client-side state. The Career Quiz and Future You game are embedded React components that read from and write to the same local opportunity data.
Does your frontend make requests to your backend?
For the hackathon demo the data is held locally in the frontend so the site works immediately without external keys. The architecture is ready to move to a backend: opportunity cards, quiz results and game state are already structured as JSON that can be served from a database or CMS. In production, the frontend would call server functions or a REST API to fetch listings, post quiz answers and track which pathways users complete.
Where does your database fit in?
A future database would store opportunity listings with fields for title, employer, category, type, summary, requirements, gains, wage or cost, and application URL. It would also store user quiz results and game progress so the platform can personalise recommendations. Lovable Cloud / Supa base is the intended backend: it gives us PostgreSQL, authentication and row-level security out of the box, which is important when storing young users’ data.
Challenges
What did you struggle with?
Scope control was the biggest challenge. Luton has dozens of real employers and training providers, and we had to resist the temptation to list everything. Instead we curated a representative set so the demo felt credible without becoming overwhelming. A second challenge was tone: making the site feel youthful and energetic while still being trustworthy enough for parents and advisers. The Memphis-inspired visual language solved this by using bold colour, geometric shapes and playful copy without sacrificing clear navigation.
How did you overcome it?
We used the Five-Second Rule as a design filter: if a visitor cannot understand the site’s purpose in five seconds, the design has failed. This forced us to keep the hero message simple, the navigation visible and the call-to-action obvious. We also tested the quiz and game flows end-to-end to make sure every path ended with a concrete local recommendation, not a generic suggestion.
Accomplishments
What did you learn?
We learned that local relevance is a feature in itself. A national job board cannot compete with a site that opens with "Built for Luton" and shows recognisable employers. We also learned that gamification works best when it is tied to real outcomes: the game is not decoration, it is the funnel that leads users toward an apprenticeship or course.
What did you accomplish?
We shipped a fully styled, interactive demo containing a curated jobs board, a weighted career quiz, a branching Future You game, and an upskilling directory. Every card opens a detailed modal with summary, requirements, gains and hours or cost. We also produced a complete branding deck covering naming, colour psychology, logo rationale, typography and the Spotlight Method for copywriting.
Next Steps
What are the next steps for your project?
The immediate next step is to connect the frontend to a real backend so listings can be updated without code changes. We would then partner with Luton Borough Council, local colleges and anchor employers to keep the opportunity data fresh. User accounts would let young people save quiz results, bookmark pathways and receive alerts when relevant jobs or courses are posted.
How can you improve it?
Improvements include: adding an employer portal so companies post directly; integrating with Luton Council’s existing youth services; adding video profiles of young people already in local roles; and building an adviser dashboard for careers leaders. We would also expand the Future You game with more sectors and add a simple CV builder that exports to PDF.
Long term, Launchpad Luton could become the default front door for young people entering work in the town — and a model that other towns replicate.