I completed my first ever summer blue sky exhibition! I have to say this was truly an adventure. All the time and effort that I put into this project really paid off in my opinion because I got to show it off in front of all sorts of people. I inspired younger siblings, impressed adults, and talked to some grade 7 students joining the program next year. I felt that my project made a difference to all those people. Now onto what blue sky really is. Blue sky is based off Apple’s idea of giving their employees time to work on their own idea and make it real. We took that idea and turned it into a project to do in maker. This year we were given the task of solving a problem for a non PLP peer. My project was to help my friend Kaiya who faints a lot. The idea was to create a sticker or piece of jewelry that using augmented reality could show information right away in the case of an emergency. I did this by drawing and designing my own medical stickers, then using an app called HP Reveal to show the augmented reality part of the project. I got the app to recognize what each sticker looked like and to then show the information card I had designed for each person. It looked like this.
During this project I had a huge problem. The app I had decided to use had a major bug and I wasn’t able to get onto the app. This meant I couldn’t practice with it or add any new stickers to it. It also made creating the ad really hard because I couldn’t use the actual app I had to use a screenshot on the phone. The app was out for almost a week and had me totally stressed, but because of this I added the call 911 on the sticker as a backup and it taught me that if things happen out of your control you have to find some other way around it. My final product included full sticker sheets, badges, and an add for the company and app.
I did six different people’s stickers all because they had asked me to and wanted to be part of the project. One of the biggest bits of good feedback I got from my peers and random people at the exhibition was about how helpful this would be in the real world. If I wasn’t a kid and wasn’t in school I could spend time developing this into an actual company and it would be received well. It inspired me into thinking that when I’m older I could potentially pursue an idea similar to this and make my life about an idea that I had. After the night of the exhibition I created a designers journal. This was to document all the learning I did and how I grew in this project. Below is a link to my book, please enjoy.
The other big part of blue sky is the set up of the actual night. Every person is out into a group based off what their project is. That group then has to decorate their space to match the theme of all their projects. For this exhibition I was out in the physical health group. Our idea was to split the room into two, the hospital and the sports field. This was because half of our projects were about sports and the other half was about something medical related. I was in the hospital group so I took charge of a lot of the responsibilities for that side. I created red crosses, made a hospital sign, created signs talking about physical health for the whole room, and brought red and white balloons. During set up we were all very worried as our area didn’t seem enough like physical health so we did some last minute changes. We put the CrossFit games on one of the screens because it promotes physical health and on the other screen we put this image up. I made this last minute as a way to bring the whole room into one.
Once the exhibition was over it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders as I didn’t have to work on the room or my project anymore. However that night I started creating my designers journal because it was still fresh on my mind. This project really helped me learn so much. I learned
- a lot about what to do when someone faints. (The medical knowledge side to the project)
- how to use many different apps to create the advertisement.
- I improved my artistic skill a lot as I’m not a very artsy person, I did a lot of drawing and designing.
- I got better at problem solving.
- I got a lot better at including a lot of my critique in my next prototype.
I can’t wait for next year when I get to think of a new idea and hopefully inspire even more people!
Leave a Reply