On weekend 14.-16. March 2014, an international group of our students participated in SomeJam, a joint effort with Verke, the National Development Centre for Online Youth Work. They worked closely with young experts and enthusiasts of varying interests to create rapid software prototypes for common good.  During the process students learned in addition to new technical skills, a design-based approach for software product development.

What happened?

During the event, participants created ideas for software-supported services. The ideas were then introduced (pitched) for all the attendants to find common interests and to form work teams accordingly. On Friday evening our developers started building prototypes to present at Saturday afternoon’s “board meeting” of mentors. On Saturday the teams introduced their ideas followed by a 20 minute discussion.

The teams could decide how and when they wanted to work. Atmosphere at was fun and cozy, yet everybody worked very intensively to produce their results. The location, Happi youth centre, was open 24/7 and participiants were offered soda and food.

All teams created software prototypes in just 48 hours. The results were amazing: finished prototypes were designed to enable e.g. services for fighting loneliness, recognizing hate speech and enabling easier ways for young people to get urgent help. When announcing the results on Sunday evening, the expert jury praised some of the teams’ architectural choices swiftly. Two teams were awarded equally for their effort with a gift card to Verkkokauppa.com. A video of the final pitching can be found at: http://bambuser.com/v/4448395

The awarded teams were:

HATE SPEECH? HATE SPEECH!

A tool that recognises hate speech based on a cumulative database of hate speech cases. After the database is created, new cases of possible hate speech can be fed into the system. The tool analyses the texts based on links between the used words and their context in order to recognise whether the words have been used for hateful purposes. The proof of concept can be used in various ways, to e.g. enhance social filtering of web-content and to support administrators' work in ensuring hate-free and good quality content.

Nettiapu nuorille (online counseling for young people)

Several chat services offer easily approachable help or guidance from a trustworthy and safe adult. However, the chats are not necessarily easily accessible. There might be many chats on at the same time, some might be filled to the brim with people and sometimes it is hard to find a service provider for the specific problem at hand. This team built a website where users can find information about chat services that are available at the particular moment. When a youngster in need enters the website, he/she can see immediately what kind of live group or private chats there are available, how long they are open and who the provider is. The web site is visually impressive and very fresh-looking.

More information on other software prototypes and their technical choises can be found at the CS Helsinki App Ideas -blog!

Comments from participiants:

“I learned a lot!”

"This is what I expected from an university with such a big name"

“I couldn’t have learned to promote a software startup idea more easily”
 

Thank you everyone!

The experience was AWESOME.

Attending the SomeJam -event was a part of the 1-2 credit  “Pop-up course: SomeJam” -course. Linkki-center. As course deliverables, experience reports and peer-to-peer guidelines for attending similar events are now updated into the App-Ideas blog.

The event was preceded by a guest lecture  “Rapid prototyping for Web and Mobile”. Both events were arranged by Hanna Mäenpää and Emilia Hjelm. Special thanks to all the participiants, organizers and sponsors including the Software Systems Engineering research group, prof. Tomi Männistö and Linkki-center.