The bench
DRGx / Case study

Custom Image

Prototype · clickable demo16 working surfaces

A from-scratch institutional platform for a South Central Los Angeles trade school — its public face, the Studio OS that runs it, and the plan to fund and ship it. Every surface below is live, seeded with real curriculum and the South Central catchment. Click through; they work.

Type
Institutional platform
Status
Prototype · read-first
Focus
Workforce & the trades
Surfaces
16 clickable

Selected work.

Live screenshots of the running surfaces — tap any frame to open the slideshow, or open the live demo from the cards below.

01 · The school
What the public sees.
School-first, warm, squared. The front door that recruits students and makes the case to funders.
02 · The system
What runs the school.
The Studio OS apps — squared, stroke icons, seeded with real curriculum and the South Central catchment. Click through; they work.
03 · The plan
How it’s built, funded & shipped.
The strategy behind the build — the map, the standards crosswalk, the gated build, the deploy plan, and the pitches.

The challenge.

A trade school has to do four hard things at once: recruit students, make the case to funders, run the academics day to day, and prove itself to accreditors. Most do it across a dozen disconnected tools, and the evidence an accreditor wants never quite lines up with the work that actually happened.

The goal was one connected platform where recruiting, enrollment, learning, operations, and accreditation evidence flow as a single chain — and where the people who run the school can see it working before anyone commits.

What we built.

Three layers, one system. The school is the public face — an 11-page marketing site, a funding case mapped to real 2026 opportunities, and a STEM-alignment narrative that opens a second circle of funders. The system is Studio OS — seven working apps spanning the student, the instructor, admin operations, the applicant pipeline, equipment-aware scheduling, WASC accreditation, and an enrollment simulator. The plan is the strategy that ships it — the page inventory, the standards crosswalk, the gated build, the deploy plan, and the pitches.

Every surface is seeded with real curriculum and the real South Central catchment — the feeder high schools, the 90008 zips, the lab-seat limits — so a walkthrough feels like the real thing, not a mockup.

How we ship it.

Read first. Errick drives. Writes come next.

Step 1

Stage it

All surfaces go up behind one private link — this hub — for your walkthrough and the board’s.

Step 2

Wire it to read

Stand up Supabase, load real data, and connect every surface read-only. You see live numbers; nothing can be changed.

Step 3

Unlock writes

Once you’re satisfied, write capability — enroll, attendance, issue-cert — unlocks gate by gate.

The whole thing is one chain — each surface hands off to the next:

recruit
Schoolsite + simulator draw applicants
intake
Pipeline — review, accept, waitlist
learn
Student + Instructor — lessons, lab, review
run
Ops + Scheduling — cohorts, rooms, certificates
prove
Accreditation — evidence → WASC → funders
Tools & disciplines
Product DesignDesign ResearchPrototypingFront-end EngineeringDatabase AdministrationPostgreSQL · SupabaseInformation ArchitectureAccreditation Systems · WASCData VisualizationApplied AI

Built read-first on a Supabase / PostgreSQL backend, with a WASC evidence layer auto-fed by the platform and a gated deploy that hands the operator a working, read-only system before any write goes live.

Outcome.

Custom Image is a complete, clickable prototype — 16 working surfaces staged behind one private hub, seeded with real data, ready to wire to live Supabase read-first. It’s proof you can walk before you fund: the school, the system, and the plan, all in one place.

Want a platform like this?

Start with a $5,000 Lab — a working prototype and a clear verdict within days.