Marvel — superheroes or superprototypes?
Last summer during filming the Vista episodes and meeting with Estonian entrepreneurs they often gave the tip that kids should use Marvel app for drawing up the idea to get a better feel through the prototype. Marvel — design and prototype app is an easy to use app for creating a prototype for basic validation.
VIVITA Vista is 10-episode educational series for children, where three VIVITA inventors are going through the start-up journey.
Digital workshop series
Digital workshop series is focused on growing the IT competence and covering the world of internet, technology and various more advanced topics when navigating the digital world.
We have already arranged two online workshops on the IT-competence series. One of them was creating art with typewriters and the other one was on using Canva for designing birthday cards. Next in line was the currently described workshop, where children would practice creating personas and then app prototypes for the selected personas. Unsurprisingly kids quickly came up with fun and crazy ideas that are listed at the end of the post.
Flow of the workshop
Our online workshop was divided into two sections. First we created new avatars for the participants. We gave for every kid one profession and they had to create a persona of it. To make the personas more real they wrote down the name, age, favourite colour or food, hobbies and where they live. Everyone introduced themselves as their new characters and after that they were thinking about everyday problems that their new role would have. After everyone got their problems defined the kids started solving these problems with an app idea. How can an app make their new persona’s life easier? Before we started designing prototypes in Marvel, everyone thought about the functionality of the app and then drew on a paper a few sketches of possible screens.
Then we moved on to Marvel. Marvel prototyping app has three main functions — design the screens in the program, take a picture of your sketches and link the screens to make them clickable. We started with designing the home-screen within the Marvel app and then took pictures of previously made sketches. After everyone had at least two screens ready we linked them together. Then we were ready to learn how to test and share the prototype.
Personas and created solutions
Emili’s new profession was a painter. Her idea was to build an app, where artists, who are not well-known, can share and sell their masterpieces. There will be also an option to donate.
Silver’s new profession was a chef. We realised in the process, that Silver is actually really interested in that field, so he planned to solve a problem between food market sellers and chefs. The target user of Silver’s app is a chef who wants to cook with fresh ingredients and in the app he or she can choose what products he lacks. On the other side the sellers can let him know when the fresh product arrives and then the courier can pick it up and deliver it to the chef.
Oliver’s selected profession was a photographer. His idea was to create an app for photographers, where they can find inspiration for their new photoshoots. They can search the locations, new techniques and perspectives.
Joonas’ new profession was a teacher but the idea of his app was from different field. He wanted to create an app, where everyone can see people from his app. Imagine if you are walking down the street and you can see that a person is coming around the next corner. Also, you can see where your friends are.
Lillemor’s new profession was a musician. Her app name is “Mälupulk” (flash drive) and you can use it for keeping your thoughts and notes in it. It’s similar to Siri but it’s in Estonian.
Lui’s new profession was a taxi driver specialised on a service with luxury cars. From his app you can order a taxi, but not a standard grey Honda or white Skoda — you can order a Porsche, Lamborghini or Tesla.
Download Marvel app or visit their website and try out how easy it is to create a prototype with it!
Text: Steveli Säde
Photos: VIVITA Estonia
