Escolas do Porto is an interactive map that scores neighbourhoods around Porto on the things that mattered to us. School performance in Portugal is publicly ranked, so the data was there to use.
Design & development
Personal project
Claude Code
Whenever a promising listing came up, we typed in the street and could immediately see which school served it, how good that school is, and how long the trip would take by bike, on foot or by car.
Type an address: the pin drops on the house, its four signals appear, and the schools nearby are listed with route times and scores
Our criteria were distance to a good school, to the beach and to Porto, and access to public transport. Each has an adjustable tolerance, so we could tighten or relax them until the best areas stood out.
The order is deliberate: school first, then the beach. A zone with a strong school and a distant beach still ranks above an average school by the sea. Train access and the drive to Porto appear as supporting hints rather than changing the colour.
Moving a threshold recolours the map; “Public only” ignores private schools and shows how many zones drop
For an address, the map lists the closest schools with real route times by bike, on foot or by car, and a public transport link for each. The public school the address is assigned to always comes first, because that is where a child gets enrolment priority.
Every Portuguese-curriculum school, public or private, gets one score from 1 to 10 based on where it stands in Público's national exam ranking. A school can move a hundred places in a single year, so the score uses the weaker of the last two results. International schools sit different exams, so instead of a number they show what they are recognised by, such as IB, Cambridge or the German schools-abroad network, and any results they publish.
For public schools the map only counts the one a zone is actually assigned to, which reflects how enrolment works in Portugal. By default a strong private school nearby counts too; “Public only” switches that off. Every zone links directly to the homes for sale within it.
Layers for each school type, and every zone in one table, sortable by any signal
Video: Escolas do Porto launch video
Angelo Wellens, Product Designer
Builds from first idea to launched product
