Apps for Good
Today's Champion is Satwant Kenth. Satwant is a Course Specialist for Apps for Good, an educational program in the United Kingdom.
What is Apps for Good?
Apps for Good is an acclaimed education movement where young people in schools learn to create apps that can change their world. We’ve grown significantly and now have nearly 100 schools delivering our courses to 5,000 students aged 11 to 18.
How does it work?
Students on our courses identify problems they are passionate about solving and follow our five-step model to eventually design a mobile app that solves their issues.
How and why do you use Balsamiq Mockups?
One step involves wireframing and prototyping the app they hope to build. Before suggesting a tool to schools, we asked our industry experts for a recommendation on what tool to use. They all recommended Balsamiq, as it was the tool they use.
Since using Balsamiq in more than 100 schools in the UK, we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and students. Teachers find Balsamiq easy to set up and students find it easy to pick up - within a matter of minutes students are generating prototypes!
It’s also been an ideal way for students to show case their mockups when submitting their work.
Not only is the tool fantastic, but also the Balsamiq team are always at hand to answer any questions or queries we’ve had and are always willing to help. It’s because of these great reasons that we intend to continue using and recommending Balsamiq for prototyping/wireframing at our schools.
Are any of these apps available?
In December we actually launched some seriously innovative apps that were originally designed using Balsamiq for our latest UK-wide schools competition -- check them out on the Google Play store (UK only) or the Apps page of our website.
How can people get involved with Apps for Good?
You can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And, if you are an educational institution interested in partnering with us, learn about joining Apps for Good.
Thanks, Satwant and everyone at Apps for Good, for the good work you're doing and for your efforts to rid the world of bad software!
Do you have a story to share about the awesome things you do with Balsamiq? Send an email to champions@balsamiq.com with your stories or blog posts!
Leon for the Balsamiq Team
Comments (1)
In case you’re interested in learning more about Apps for Good, I just came across a great video on the project here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=PAOVyFnz0W8&NR=1. Keep an eye out for Balsamiq Mockups in it!