Designing a Mobile Application for Polman Babel Internship Administration Using an Iterative Prototyping Model

Abstract

Internships are an important component of vocational education because they provide students with real-world work experience to understand industrial processes firsthand. However, internship administration at the Bangka Belitung State Manufacturing Polytechnic was previously carried out manually through paper logbooks, signed attendance sheets, and physical document validation. This process often caused problems such as delays in verification, risk of data loss, difficulty in daily monitoring, and a lack of transparency of information between students, industry partners, and supervising lecturers. Based on these issues, this study designed a mobile application to digitize the entire internship administration process using the prototyping method. This approach allows for rapid prototyping, direct user feedback, and iterative improvements until the system reaches its final form that meets the needs. The research phase included data collection through interviews, observations, and literature review, needs analysis, interface design, Android application implementation, and system testing. The results showed that the application provides digital logbook features, location-based attendance, document upload, industry partner validation, supervisor monitoring, and trial scheduling. Testing demonstrated that all functions functioned well and user acceptance reached the very acceptable category. Therefore, this application can be an effective solution to improve the accuracy, efficiency, and integration of internship administration in vocational education environments.