What a brilliant day. Teenagers from 30 schools across Humberside poured into the KC Stadium to meet some of the coolest people working in Science and Engineering. The full set of pictures will be up here very soon.
Delivering that all important 45 sec pitch
Top app designers Dave Addey and Alyson Fielding ran the “Design an App” workshop , taking students through their own experiences on “QI” and “Malcolm Tucker – The Lost Phone”, then challenging the student teams to create an app which was innovative , marketable and which they could pitch to the room in 45 seconds. The designers were overwhelmed by the quality of the ideas,finding it a struggle to choose the winning apps. But tough decisions had to be made and here they are with Dave and Alyson’s comments:
Best Pitch: Baysgarth School, for “EFA – Emergency First Aid”
– This pitch told a brilliant story of how the app would be used to provide emergency first aid. The presenter engaged the audience through a direct, clear delivery, and told a great story.
Best Icon: South Holderness Technology College, for “Vex”
– This app converts your voice into a text message, so that you can message people if you are unable to use your hands to control the phone. The icon is simple and clear, and sums up the app’s functionality perfectly. We could see the icon working well at a small size on a device’s screen, and also at a large size in promotional material and on an app store.
Most Marketable App: Brumby Engineering College, for “Parker”
– The app finds nearby car parking spaces using the phone’s GPS, and dynamically checks the number of available parking spaces. It also checks if any disabled spaces are available, and saves fuel by avoiding the need to drive around looking for a free space.
Most Innovative App: Bridlington School Sports College, for “Instroke – Instrument Karaoke”
– This app is for people learning a musical instrument. The music you’re learning is displayed by the app, so it can turn the page for you. If you’re nervous about playing live, you can find other musicians learning complementary instruments and play together online – even building up an orchestra online.
Best Teamwork: Howden School & Technology College, for “The Domino Effect”
– The team worked together brilliantly, with clearly-defined roles and with everyone bought in to the app idea. Most notably, anyone in the team could tell the story of the app when approached – always a good sign of a team working well together.
Best App Overall: Oasis Academy, for “Make Up Your Mind”
– This app lets you try on different make-up looks and clothes outfits, to find out what suits or fits you before you buy. It makes great use of the device’s features (camera, network, GPS) to find make-up and items to suit you, and to help you find where to buy them. Given that half a billion pounds-worth of online clothing purchases are returned every year , this is an app which could help save a serious amount of money.
Congratulations to all our winners and to Oasis Academy who won the overall prize. Hull Apps will run a day long workshop in their school to help them take their app further along the road to development. We’d also like to thank
Apps for Good for providing advice and support material for this session.
