Two Days — Three Startup Winners

A voice navigator for the visually impaired, English language learning games, teaching computer programming to children are the results of two days intensive work by young people at Hackathon (forum for developing software), Hack for People at the HSE Centre for Prototype Development. The participants had just 48 hours to formulate the concept for a project, write a strategy to promote and create it or fine-tune a prototype. 

Students weren’t restricted by hackathon regulations in their choice of subject for mobile apps, it could be education and finance, transport and logistics, retail and health. For 48 hours without stopping to sleep, programmers, web-designers, analysts, marketing consultants, teamed up under the guidance of experts and IT specialists to invent interesting and useful mobile apps intended to make the lives of city residents easier.

More than 100 people took part in the first day of the hackathon. 32 teams presented their ideas and 15 of them went through to the final. At the next stage, teams had to pitch their idea to the expert committee and demonstrate what their prototype for a mobile app could do.

The team which designed Kids ‘n’ Code took first place with their game to inspire children to learn about computer science and programming. Assisted by the specially designed robot Codebuster, young programmers can find out how computers work, and learn more about programming with every new level of the game.

‘These days children are practically born clutching ipads and smartphones,’ says the team leader Petr Boiko. ‘They are what we call digital native and spend a lot of time on mobile devices but they have no idea how they work nor of what is going on behind the screens. They think that programming is boring and difficult and their parents worry that the time they spend playing games doesn’t help them to develop. Our game has a good story, attractive graphics and different kinds of gameplays which children like and parents will be relieved because their children will be getting basic knowledge which will help them to learn real programming codes.’ 

The team, mostly HSE students, plans to develop a multi-level game on iOS and Android and eventually go offline - launch a board game and computer construction kit. The project won the special People’s Prize category too.

Second place was awarded to the Jetlin project, a multi-user online app to test language skills which allows you to play with other users rather than with a computer. During the hackathon, the team managed to make a prototype app and draught the main design. Alina Bikaeva, representing the Jetlin team said their next plans are to tweak and test the app so their can put it on AppStore. 

Third place went to the team who designed Willy - a voice navigation app for the visually impaired. This app allows people who have problems with seeing to feel more at ease in town and plan their own journeys independently.

Hackathon is the most accelerated way to focus on projects and their development. For people not ready for such high-speed approaches there are more moderate ways to realise an idea. The HSE{Pro} programme is an example.