23rd February 2021
Virtual Car Team Week 38: Another week, another design challenge...
Following Half Term and Pancake Day, we spent the first 15 minutes of the call having a little catch-up; focussing predominately on our favourite pancake choices!
Catch up over, it was time to get cracking with the evening's activities.
This week, the challenge was to design an App for either CAUC use or for the wider Greenpower Community. As non of us really have much experience designing an app (..other than Jeff, one of our volunteers who is a bit of a computer genius!), we started by watching a 10 minute App Design Video for beginners. It took us through the whole process; from building a design brief right through to creating the app interface.
With a better idea on the key points to consider when designing an app, the group split into two and headed into their respective break out rooms - either 'Team Dylan' or 'Team Basil'.
Having clearly paid attention to the advice given in the video, both teams took the decision to start by listing all the app's features before starting on any interface designs.
Before long, an hour had passed and it was time to head back into the main room ready to present the app designs.
Up first was Team Basil - who chose to develop an app specific to CAUC.
Captioned as "the meaner app of Greenpower", the apps features included:
-Training Area (with specific tutorial videos on things like driving lines, puncture repair etc)
-Meet the team section to help integrate new members. Each team member would be able to create their own avatar
-Personal logins and admin area with 'important dates for the diary' section
-Gallery area for team members to post race day photos
-Flappy Bird style driving line game with recorded score and leader board feature
-An alarm system that sounds if a team member isn't where they should be at a specific time!!!!
Team Dylan on the other hand took a different approach and decided to develop an App for the Greenpower community.
During the presentation, team Dylan members explained how the app would have:
-Team sections with get to know pages and a trophy cabinet showing the awards each team has won
-Live timings feed
-Race Day section which includes attendees, date, time, pictures of the circuit being used, track records, timetable of the day, awards given etc.
-Get to know the Greenpower sponsors
-Interactive Mario Kart style game with leaderboards and chance to compete against other schools / teams
-''Keeping up with Greenpower", which would have weekly / monthly interviews with different teams competing in Greenpower.
Whilst it is absolutely no secret that we are one very competitive team and like to have a winner at the end of a challenge, given that both teams created two apps with different purposes, it was decided that we wouldn't take a vote to decide a winner!
What started out as a fun little zoom activity has definitely proven to spark some very exciting ideas and concepts. Who knows, once the new car is built maybe we should consider developing our own app. That would be pretty cool....I guess only time will tell.
Before we logged off for the evening, we were joined by CAUC alumni Emma Davis who popped on to say hello. Currently on her placement year with a Japanese Design Firm, Emma has spent her free time designing livery for our trailer and wanted to share the latest designs.
I know we are biased but how brilliant is this? How fun would it be to have this on the side of our trailer? Huge thank you to Emma for creating this for us!
Catch ups with past and present team members, creating apps and trailer designs - what a busy Tuesday evening! Wonder what we'll get up to next week.
See you then!