Two recent graduates received awards for the apps they created as graphic design students while at Algonquin.
Dima Badawi, 25, and Caroline Guindon, are this year’s winners of Applied Arts Magazine student awards. The awards honour creative minds in their digital and print work.
The project was to create a mobile app for iOs from scratch for the interactive design course taught by Jed Looker.
“My teacher had us go through a life activity and envision how an app would make that experience more enjoyable,” said Guindon.
Badawi chose to tackle the issue of bullying for her app.
The app called It Gets Better is somewhat of an “anti-bullying social network,” according to Badawi. It is an anonymous live chat for people who are victims of bullying to interact and get the help of professionals.
“I know a friend [of mine] who suffered from bullying in high school,” said Badawi.
The idea came to her as she watched a documentary on bullying.
“I have always thought of the idea of bullying in North America,” Badawi said.
Guindon’s award-winner was her Music Festival Application, which allows festival-goers to track the schedule, weather, and even friends at the event.
“The challenge is to hone in on the biggest problem. The tendency is to create a Swiss army knife,” said Looker.
“It was quite a bit process; research, sitemaps, personas, wireframes, lots of user testing and more,” said Guindon.
The ceremony to commemorate the winners was in Toronto Oct. 29. Their works will be displayed in the November/December 2014 issue of Applied Arts.
The applications are design projects and not currently active.
“It’s really good for them and it’s really good for our program as well. To be competitive and to show the quality of work we’re doing here at the college. We’re doing some professional grade work,” said Looker.