Higgle – Enterprise Ireland, Innovation Voucher
Higgle - Enterprise Ireland, Innovation Voucher
Overview
IADT partnered with Higgle, an innovative digital platform designed to help primary school teachers foster creative thinking through the art curriculum. Led by Louise Glynn, with research assistant Seán Óg Durack Monks, this €10,000 Innovation Voucher project transformed a student concept into a fully functional resource for teachers.
Challenge
Higgle originated as a student project by Grace Brennan while studying Visual Communication Design at IADT. After advancing through IADT’s Student Accelerator and the New Frontiers programme, Grace aimed to develop a live platform offering adaptable, creativity focused art prompts for teachers. The main challenge was converting her Figma prototype and conceptual documentation into a scalable, user friendly content management system-while meeting tight timeand budget constraints.
IADT’s Approach
Guided by Lead Researcher Louise Glynn, the IADT team produced a detailed Requirements Specification and Entity Relationship Diagram to shape development. A graduate student, supervised throughout the project, built the platform using Strapi (a headless CMS) with Next.js/React. The final system integrated user authentication, role based access, and a Stripepowered subscription model.
Impact
The collaboration delivered a robust, self managed CMS that turned a student idea into a fully operational business platform. Higgle is now positioned to support primary school teachers with flexible, engaging art education resources, advancing the founder’s goal of making creative learning more accessible and inspiring
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