How can technology help stressed parents quickly find their lost child in a crowded park? And how do you design an app for that in just a few hours? Filip Jadczak, a fourth-year Global Business and Digital Arts student tackled that challenge and won the top $5,000 prize in Communitech’s Design to Win competition.
Held over a weekend, the dual competition Code/Design to Win brought together 75 coding and UX design students from 12 institutions to compete, meet and learn from Communitech partners.
Here, Filip talks about his winning design, the benefits of working alongside coders and mentoring tech firms - and how GBDA learning emphasizes the human perspective in design thinking.
Tell us about the design challenge and your winning solution.
The challenge at the competition was to design an app that would help parents find lost children in a busy theme park like Canada’s Wonderland. A bonus point was given if the solution did not involve the child wearing or carrying any device.
My solution was basically to crowdsource the location of the lost child. I figured that even if the child doesn’t have any device on them, almost all of the adults should. I also figured that since parents take so many photos of their children on their smartphones, why not use that to help find the child?
My solution has the parent input the name and photo of their child into the app, and this information is sent out to all of the park staff. Once a staff member finds the child, they send their location directly to the parents, and the parents see a map with directions on how to get to that exact location. My designs for the app itself were minimalistic and straightforward, since I realized that the parents would be in a highly stressful situation and I wanted to help them focus on the task at hand.
What struck you about Communitech hosting this type of event for students?
I think what really struck me about the competition was the amount of various creative ideas I heard from the participants. After completing the competition, it was really interesting to hear the different approaches that people took toward the challenge.
I even talked about it with some of the coders, who had completely different ideas for solutions that I wouldn’t have even thought of. Having that opportunity to bounce ideas off of each other really got me to think more broadly.
I also think the event was a great way to show students from all over Canada the amazing things that are happening here in the Waterloo region. We got to visit company offices and network with people in the industry who were genuinely interested in talking to us.
What aspects of the GBDA program prepared you to do so well in the competition?
One great thing about the GBDA program is that we take the User Experience Design course (GBDA 103) right from first year, so we learn right way about the different strategies and tools we can use to consider the human aspect of digital products.
In the following years of the program, we incorporate those strategies into other projects, whether they are websites, apps, games, or even physical devices. Since the GBDA program is very project-based, I’ve been able to build up my skills by applying those UX design principles in a wide variety of circumstances. Having the 3rd year internship was also a great learning experience for me and I think the skills I gained in the industry really helped me to be successful at the competition as well.