Congratulations to Coventry High School’s own Kimberly Rodrigues for placing second in The RIDE App Design Competition! Through the use of computer programming, Kimberly created the app Convo. This app could be used to better define emotions to help individuals determine how they feel.
Congratulations to Coventry High School’s own Kimberly Rodrigues for placing second in The RIDE App Design Competition! Through the use of computer programming, Kimberly created the app Convo. This app could be used to better define emotions to help individuals determine how they feel.
As an incoming 9th grader, Kimberly had an interest in computer programming and decided to enroll in programming electives. Kimberly took a programming class, taught by Mr. Kettle, where they used the programming language of Alice to build coding skills. The class utilizes Code.org and App Lab, which Kimberly would later use for the app competition. The main focus of the app design competition was to find a way to connect people using digital resources during a time where virtual communication has become so vital.
As previously stated, Kimberly’s app is used to help teens who “have ever struggled to find the right words to describe what [they] feel”. The app allows the user to pick from broad descriptions of how they are feeling to which the app directs the user to more specific descriptions related to the broad term they selected. Kimberly’s inspiration for the app was the mental health struggle many teens are facing, especially during these isolated times. This app could help teens better understand what they’re feeling so that they can more accurately describe their emotions if they need to talk to someone. Kimberly’s app can be accessed through this link.
The app design competition was for one week, but Kimberly created her app in just two days. She took one day to brainstorm ideas and the second day to program the entire app. Her favorite aspect of the competition was brainstorming ideas for her app. Kimberly used the brainstorming process to understand her own emotions and therefore, channel personal experiences into the design process to establish the apps’ overall goal. For Kimberly, the most challenging aspect of the project was her quality of being a perfectionist. Kimberly did not have large amounts of time during the week to work on the project and therefore worked very diligently while trying to perfect every detail. Being a fellow perfectionist, there is always a struggle between prioritizing the major and minor details and determining what is worth spending time on. Regardless, Kimberly enjoyed her time designing the app as it allowed her to take time to analyze her own emotions and help define how she was feeling to in order help others.
Kimberly continues to grow her love for programming and engineering as she plans to become a future robotics engineer. Competing in the app design competition was important to Kimberly not only because she enjoys programming, but more importantly because she wanted to help inspire teens in her generation that despite the stereotypes, anything we put our minds to is possible.
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