We love bringing you stories direct from our Tech Girls themselves! Get a taste of what one of our teams experienced in the 2017 Search for the Next Tech Girl Superhero with a blog post that the Helping Hands Tech Girls Team wrote themselves – we are so proud of Helping Hands and all of our teams this year. These girls crack us up!
Helping Hands Blog
Week 1 :
In week 1, we all came to Lily’s house to brainstorm ideas for our app. At first we all wanted to do a refugee app, but then we looked at a document and we didn’t really know anyone who was a refugee. Then we came down to the decision
that we’ll do some of the other ideas. We all watched a video on what it was like to be Tech Girl. We all knew that we were going to have the best time ever making a app.
Week 2:
So on week two we did a Google Hangout with Tasa, Michelle and Ruth from Salesforce (our mentors) we all shared our ideas, introduced ourselves and told them all the topics we had to choose from. They suggested that if we did a refugee app it would be very hard to research all of the facts and know what it’s like to be a refugee. So then we settled on our second idea for a confidence app. We choose to create a confidence app because we did some research and found out the girls in Australia are most stressed in the world. This is why we should do this topic.
Week 3:
In week 3, we did a Google Hangout with our mentors again and finalised our positions. Summer was the coding director, Mia was the research director, Lily was the creative director and Ruby was the business director. We all set out a brief plan for our app. At first we decided to call it Journey To Happyness. But then we had to change the name to HappyNess because it didn’t fit as a logo.
Week 4:
Today we searched through the Google Play Store and the App Store for apps that were like the one we were going to create. We found three other similiar apps like ours but there none exactly like ours which was a very good sign at the time. But the sad thing was we found out that Ruth and Michelle had left Salesforce. Michelle left to go on a holiday and Ruth wanted to go and work for another company. Tasa introduced us to a coding program called App Inventor. We built our app in this program. But you could only test it on Android devices, so Karen (our coach) bought a Samsung phone so we can use it for testing.
Week 5:
In week 5, we researched how other people have tried to solve the problem. We learnt that Australian kids are the most stressed kids on earth so we thought meditation, happy music, friendly messages, laughter and friendship would be simple things we could do to overcome stress. These 5 things we found most calming and lifting. Summer thought another solution that could be inspirational quotes. We planned to target this app at girls aged 5-13 (so in primary school). The only thing is that if you are older or younger you can still use our cool app.
Week 6:
This week we were focusing on a basic plan for the app. Tasa came over to Lily’s house to teach us how to use App Inventor. Then we started to plan the look. So it was official that our app was going to be called HappyNess, it was made to help primary aged girls who struggle with confidence and making friends. This we thought it was very important to us to help other people in ways that was fun.
Week 7:
This week, we made our business plan and Lily made some wireframes. We settled for a theme of aqua and purple. We thought those colours represented calmness and fun. We started with the basics on our app e.g the home page, the colours and how many pages of it. That was what Summer and Mia were doing. We started testing out placing images on the app e.g emojis and happy faces.
Week 8:
This week was all about the business plan. We were working out how our logos would look. Ruby and Tasa were looking through the App Store and Google Play Store for apps like ours. Luckily, there was nothing quite like our plans. Mia and Summer played around with App Inventor and created our “How are You Feeling” Page. Lily, as the creative director, looked online for free logo creators, and of course it was a success! Now we have a fabulous logo for our app.
Week 9:
This week was a really fun week. This week, we planned our pitch video. Some scenes were skit and some scenes were info about our app. It was going to be very persuasive and be funny but tells you the info! Those are all the things you need for a good pitch, right? Of course we’re right! We are the one and only team Helping Hands! LOL. We still did a little work on the app and after the few weeks we had it was in really good shape. We left this week pretty happy.
Week 10:
This week, everyone came to Mia’s house to finalise our business plan. We did really well, with a lot of food and water we managed to have a really fun session and almost completed our business plan. We all worked on how we’ll advertise our app without vandalizing public property so we thought we’ll start with a small crowd with 210 people (all the girls in our school). Everything went really smooth this week.
Week 11:
This had to be the BEST week ever! We all took the train into the city to Salesforce to film our pitch! It was amaz-balls! We had never ending snacks and really cool conference rooms to work in! Lily made a script the day before so we can learn our lines for the pitch and be confident. Everyone especially Summer loved the work spaces! We won’t go through the whole process of filming but let us tell you this, it was fantastic! Here’s a link to our pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upFdvIupY3A.
Week 12:
In week 12, we were a little late for the demo so we quickly made a good one narrated by the one and only Ruby! Mia had brought a cake to celebrate with for finishing which we all loved! We fixed all the bugs in our app and changed the theme to just a peachy pink colour. It was much more calming and friendly. Our demo video was very instructive and helpful if you don’t know how to use our app. Here’s a link to our demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7hwcyKLEr0&t=6s
Sadly, our Tech Girls journey has ended and we wish it could last forever. Helping Hands would like to thank Tech Girls Movement for this amazing opportunity and we wish all the other Tech Girls, mentors and coaches the best for the end. We’d like to thank Tasa Markovski our mentor for helping us make our amazing app and just generally encouraging! Thanks to Karen Taylor for being a great coach and organising all our sessions and taking her good time for us. But most of all we’d like to thank Tech Girls Movement for giving us a place in the NSW Finalists!!!!!!!!!!!! We’d love to win and help other girls gain confidence. Our app is on the Google Play Store for free and is called HappyNess. Thanks for reading our Tech Girls Blog, from Helping Hands!