UNU Jogja Informatics Students Develop NusaGo and The Kost Platforms Through Industry Internship

Yogyakarta, Indonesia – Students from the Informatics Study Program, Faculty of Information Technology, Nahdlatul Ulama University of Yogyakarta (UNU Jogja) demonstrated their software development capabilities through an industry internship at PT NusaGo Digital Travelindo. During the internship, the students were directly involved in developing NusaGo and The Kost, two digital platforms serving the travel, mobility, and digital accommodation sectors.

The experience was later shared with the university community through an internship dissemination seminar as part of the students' academic accountability and as a platform for knowledge sharing with fellow students. The event provided an opportunity to present the software development process, the challenges encountered, and the solutions implemented while working on real industry projects.

During the internship, the students developed NusaGo, a digital platform that integrates hotel bookings, boarding house rentals, vehicle rentals, and travel package reservations into a single application. They also contributed to the development of The Kost, a platform that enables users to search for and book boarding houses, homestays, rental houses, villas, and apartments conveniently and securely.

The development work followed industry standards, covering UI/UX design, mobile application implementation, frontend and backend integration using Supabase, and the development of more than 32 interconnected web pages within a unified system.

The students also implemented several security and transaction features, including Know Your Customer (KYC) identity verification, double-booking prevention mechanisms, digital payment integration through Midtrans Virtual Account, and automated transaction cancellation using Node-Cron. These experiences strengthened their understanding of building secure, reliable, and production-ready applications.

In addition, the internship team developed the company's official website as a marketing and business information platform. Built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS, the website includes company profiles, privacy policies, and partner registration forms.

Beyond developing new features, the students were responsible for API testing, deploying applications to the Google Play Store, optimizing partner dashboards, and fixing system bugs to improve overall application performance and user experience.

Yana Hendriana, Head of the Informatics Study Program at UNU Jogja, said that involving students in industry projects is an essential component of project-based and experiential learning. According to him, students need opportunities to solve real-world problems in order to understand professional standards in the technology industry.

"Through this internship program, students not only learn how to build applications but also gain an understanding of how digital products are professionally developed—from planning and implementation to testing and deployment. Experiences like these provide valuable preparation before they enter the workforce," he said.

Yana added that the Informatics Study Program continues to expand collaborations with industry partners to provide students with opportunities to strengthen both their technical expertise and soft skills through real-world projects.

Meanwhile, the internship team, consisting of Miftahul Irfan A.B. as team leader, along with Ilham Mustaqim, Huda Muliya, Mahendra Dwi Putra, and Rahmat Ivaldy, said the internship offered valuable learning experiences beyond what they had gained in the classroom.

"We learned that developing an application is more than just writing code. We also had to ensure the application was secure, user-friendly, free of bugs, and capable of meeting user needs. During the internship, we learned teamwork, project management, and the application release process according to industry standards," the team said.

According to the students, the internship also strengthened collaboration among team members with different roles, including frontend developers, backend developers, mobile developers, and quality assurance engineers, enabling them to successfully complete the development targets for both the NusaGo and The Kost platforms.

Through this internship experience, the students gained valuable professional experience while making tangible contributions to digital platforms ready for public use. The achievement reflects the commitment of the Informatics Study Program at UNU Jogja to producing graduates who are adaptive, highly competent, and well-prepared to meet the evolving demands of the technology industry. [Latifah]