#YourHealthInYourHands was the hashtag of the day. As we were tasked with getting the future coders from the Youth Forum up to speed with programming and design so that they can build their own solutions to improve their access to healthcare.
In partnership with Code4Health, NHS England and the British Youth Council, we had the pleasure of teaching the brightest minds of the future the joy of creating software, getting it working and downloaded to their personal mobile devices.
We started the day walking everyone through the entire process of app development. From ideation to prototyping to development, to testing and to launch. Something that everyone has so far taken for granted – being able to download an app to your phone was explored and demystified.
The young people from the Youth Forum arrived ready with bundles of ideas in all the various ways that healthcare can be improved for teenagers like themselves by using technology. They honed in on all their fantastical innovations and created wireframe after wireframe of what they imagined should exist today.
By mid-day, our attendees had already created working prototypes and excited voices could be heard around the room when they finally manage to get it downloaded to their phones. Here’s something that existed only in their heads a few hours ago, but now it is a tappable, animated prototype. It feels like a “real” product.
After a light lunch, we commenced the programming sessions. First using Scratch and MIT App Inventor, then subsequently with native development tools. All the instructors from the App Brewery were amazed at how fast our young students were able to absorb and understand the abstract programming concepts that many adults struggle with.
At the end of the day, everyone had a fully-functioning app that they had designed and programmed running on their personal phones. Technological boundaries were lifted and we could tell that many attendees had caught the programming bug. Our instructors were inundated with questions on the next steps and how one can continue to develop the newly acquired skills so they can build more complex web and mobile apps.
The world is definitely their oyster.
About The App Brewery
The App Brewery is a leading tech education company. We enable people from non-technical backgrounds to quickly understand and get up to speed with the latest frontiers in technology. While we provide a whole range of bespoke corporate educational events, we also invest back into our community with our public courses on programming, design and digital marketing. Join one of our events today or contact us to find out more.