Blue Sky was the last bit of stress this year and it ended the year with a bang. The Blue Sky Exhibition is an annual event done by all the PLP grades in June. It is an open ended project where you can choose what ever you want to do. Apart from being accepted by the teachers, the only two rules are that it must be important to you and something that you designed. We had to follow a guideline called  the LAUNCH cycle to keep us on track and arrive with a finished product. LAUNCH is an acronym for specific phases of the project you go through and is all about design thinking. Design thinking is a flexible framework for getting the most out of the creative process.

In the first phase, the L stands for Look Listen and Learn. The goal of this phase is awareness by a sense of  wonder of a process, awareness of a problem or empathy to a group. The three things I cared about were climate change, engineering and pollution and I wanted to aim my product to the entire world. I had instantly started brainstorming by thinking about everyday problems or using a random word generator to think of ideas. However, all of my ideas were either too obscure, have already been done or I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to make a product that was actually helpful and was a valuable idea but I didn’t want to do something out of my skill level. I was falling behind in the timeline because I didn’t have my idea but one day after my basketball practice I thought of my idea.

My idea moving forward was to have a mobile service to recharge electric cars with enough power to make it to the nearest charging stations when they run out of charge. A service truck with a level 2 charger would be ordered to your car. This would be cheaper than a tow truck and would take less time. The next phase sparked by curiosity is about Asking Tons Of Questions. This leads to Understanding The Process through an authentic research experience by all kinds of ways. Students then have to apply the newly required knowledge to potential solutions.

For the A phase we had to fill out a need to knows list and an action plan  on your idea. I really underestimated the amount of time and effort I would need to put into my project but I am not surprised because I usually go overboard on my projects. The U phase was really fun doing the primary and secondary research because I collected data from a survey monkey I made and an extended interview on someone that owned an electric car. I had solid evidence from my survey and I was prepared for all of the sceptical questions. I learnt a lot about what I wanted to do for Blue Sky and I was ready to pitch my idea to the teachers.

The pitch form is a combination of a numbers document explaining your idea and an interview with the teacher to see if you get accepted. My original idea going into the interview was to make the service truck charger using small rechargeable batteries and wires. On top of that I was going to use my sewing project to represent the service truck at the exhibition. I  barely got accepted because of the mess my group got into for DI. I was so happy that my idea was accepted as I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t got approved. After getting accepted, I reflected on the interview and the work load that the small scale model of the service was going to take. I then decided to tell the teacher that I was just going to make an app and a phone call. I realized that anyone can have a generator and level 2 charger but it is the service that is the important unique part of my main project. 

In the N phase students Navigate Their Ideas by brainstorming, analyzing and combining ideas resulting in a concept they want to create. For the N phase, we downloaded an app called post it and we organized our ideas into categories and get a pretty firm concept on what we wanted to do now. With a firm idea, I was given a “ready to create” from my teacher to start the C phase, I instantly started planning for what I was going to do. The C phase stands for Create A Prototype and for this we had to make 3 rapid prototypes (build quickly, share them immediately) and 2 live prototypes (run your solution for a couple weeks out in the real world). I had first designed 2 keynote presentations for my design of the app. I had also made a phone call script. Moving forward into the live prototyping I had started making an app using Xcode (an apple program). However, I accidentally pressed a set page layout that didn’t work for my app and I had to restart for the final product. With the phone call script, I recorded and edited it using iMovie because it was the only app that could record while using FaceTime. I thought my prototypes turned out pretty well despite being a little bit late. 

I was really annoyed that I had to restart my app but with the limited time left I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. I sat down in my living room and I didn’t move until I made lots of progress or it was past midnight. The reason I used Xcode was because my friend Angelo made his app on there and it turned out really well. I only had a few days left and lots of people said I couldn’t finish it in time. However, I persevered and I pretty much finished it. I spent over 25 hours of work coding trying to finish and I might try to improve my app in the summer to make it work properly. One problem I had during the project was that I followed a tutorial (for making the user location) but didn’t realize this was for an older version. Therefore after spending hours trying to make one thing work it was wasted due to this one problem. Another problem I had while making the app was that I forgot to crop the images so when you clicked one button it might tap a different one. I made my app on top of all my other school work and basketball so I am really happy how well it turned out. Despite the problems I faced I finished the coding in time to show it at the exhibition.

App that created (main storyboard)

For the exhibition we were grouped with the grade 9s that had similar products. I was in the group “products for the world” with Kaia, Rhiann, Izzy, Amelia and Taylor. My responsibility was to make group signs with the aisle and product name. I thought they looked really good when traced with a pen. My table was pretty empty because I forgot to take account of the looks I needed as I was so focused on coding. I had my iPad showing my Keynote presentation and a laptop showing my app that I made. The Keynote presentation consisted of all the work I put into it from the LAUNCH cycle. I found that talking to people about my project was really easy because of how much time and effort I put into it. I could explain my idea in a elevator pitch, then I went in depth on how I made my app and what went wrong. Turns out I even talked to an apple developer about my app. I only found out after I was done presenting but she said it was a really good and interesting idea. She talked to my teacher afterwards and told my teacher if she has any camps she will invite me to go. 

In the end I learnt a lot and it was an amazing journey to go through. I am happy to do Blue Sky  next year and I am going to start thinking of ideas in the summer so the I won’t fall behind next year. I thought my final product was really good and building the app was my favourite part. During the LAUNCH cycle there were many ups and downs but my project and year has ended on a good side. All of the hours I put into the app payed off in the end and I am really proud how well it turned out, even though I had limited time. I put one lesson I learnt from DI into my project because I didn’t spend any money because I used all of the resources online to create my product. This was an amazing year and I am looking towards what will come in grade 9.