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Archive for August, 2011
2-the-res-Q bring their app to life
Posted by Adizah Tejani on August 25th, 2011
James Dyer, Project Co-ordinator from Fuerte talks about working with 2-the-res-Q over the summer.
Never work with Children or Animals… isn’t that what they say? Well, ‘they’ couldn’t be more wrong. At least for the former anyway…
In mid-July Fuerte were approached by Apps for Good to support a team of young individuals who would win a Dragon’s Den style competition. The winning team, aptly named 2-the-res-Q, were the victors with their anti-bullying app. The prize? To have their idea come to life. Our role, as an App design and build agency, has been to guide and support the 2-the-res-Q team through the whole process of creating an App.
For the last few weeks we’ve been working closely with the team of girls to flesh out the concept, produce wireframes and designs. We’re now at the very exciting stage of starting the build. The main aim has been to produce what they want; we’ve played a supporting role and given them access to our designers and developers. The girls have kindly given up one day a week from their Summer Holidays to work in our studio (no rest for the… app developer?). They produced the site-map and all of the wireframes for the app themselves. The next step was to put together mood boards and sketch deigns for every screen. Our designers, working closely with the girls, produced the final artwork. It’s been a very collaborative effort.
A key component for this App is the content, and the more important question to be answered; where are we going to get it? Apps for Good assisted the girls by connecting them to a partner, Cyber Mentors, who were willing to help with the content and allow access to their mentoring system.
It’s been a great experience for all parties. The girls have had a chance to have their idea produced. They’ve had experience of working in a studio environment, created wireframes, produced design concepts and will manage a project from concept to completion. And all before they turn 15! For us, it’s a great chance to pass on our knowledge and give the girls an opportunity to experience studio life. It also educates the girls about the variety of opportunities available in our industry. We’ve had the opportunity to produce an App that helps a group of people who don’t know where to turn when experiencing bullying. Of course, it’s been fun too, and great to work with a group of bright, creative individuals who are full of life and great ideas.
Fuerte are part of our growing Expert community, who help support our student app teams and their work. To find out more please join our Linkedin group or get in touch.
TeenTech students put together their app ideas in Hull
Posted by Adizah Tejani on August 4th, 2011
Maggie Philbin founder of Teentech talks about the ‘Design an App’ workshop, where teenagers from 30 schools across Humberside were challenged to create an app idea which was innovative and marketable.
In January I was delighted to hand Apps for Good a Learning Without frontiers Award for their innovative and positive impact in education. I always read up carefully about award candidates and the more I read about Apps for Good the more excited I felt about what they did.
My own light bulb moment came when I realised there might be a powerful opportunity to collaborate. As founder of TeenTech , I’ve organised large scale events for teenagers for the past four years and I realised that a “Design an App” challenge would make a really stimulating workshop in our Innovation Zone . The only problem was we had to squeeze an experience Apps for Good run over 70 hours into a meaningful activity that that would run for just one hour and yet still give the teenagers a real taste of what app building was all about.
While I was considering how on earth to do this, Dave Addey who heads up app company Agant made the fatal mistake of approaching me at a ebook conference. He was wonderfully generous and not only volunteered his time but that of Alyson Fielding from Pyuda who’d worked with him on the award winning Malcolm Tucker app.
Our focus at TeenTech is helping young teenagers meet and understand more about the real people who work in contemporary technology. It was important that the workshop showcased the great personal story Dave and Alyson had to tell about their work on apps like UK Trains, Arsenal and Malcolm Tucker but also delivered a clear and lively introduction to app design, incorporating the wealth of practical experience from Apps for Good.
I mapped out a structure for the workshop and then Iris (Apps for Good CEO), Dave, Alyson and myself set up a conference call to talk through the detail, determined to get the most from such a challenging timeframe
The “challenging “ timeframe meant Alyson and Dave had just 13 minutes to explain apps, tell their story, detail the range of people working in their team and their different skills and then explain the capabilities of an app and how they exploit the functions of a smart phone.
Then we challenged the teenagers (300 over three sessions) to work in groups of ten to develop their own ideas for apps. You can see the winning ideas here. There were also tables of teachers competing for the chance to turn their app into reality.
The feedback was incredible. It wasn’t just the students who enjoyed the activity but the teachers. Some said they were going to tear up lesson plans as a result of what they saw.
Thanks to the generosity of Apps for Good, Dave and Alyson you’ll need to watch out for a raft of young app designers in Humberside. It was a very, very successful experiment and as a result we will be running the “Design an App” workshop at all our TeenTech events across the UK. From both Apps for Good and TeenTech’s point of view there is serendipity in the timing as Apps for Good will make their detailed course plans available online for their partners, so students and teachers in the Apps for Good community will be able to follow up on everything they have learnt. A massive thank you to Iris and to Dave and Alyson who helped create such a powerful one hour session which will inspire thousands of young teenagers over the coming year.