Lillian the Operations lead at Refactory started by thanking the students for choosing to spend their Saturday with us, introduced the team and took them through a quick info session on who refactory is and what we do.

The students while quiet and somewhat none responsive, which is expected were engaged in a quick ice breaker meant to jog their creativity and give them insight into what to expect for the rest of the day. The students then took to front to each explain what they had created with the resources they had been given. The similarity with the structure of the program at Refactory, the students were taught both soft skills and technical skills. Joanita Nvannungi the administrative lead went through the design-thinking process while emphasizing prototyping and user experience.

The students, divided into groups of 3 were tasked to think of any problem and come up with at least 2 solutions each and share them with the rest of the group.After that they were introduced to a “The Marvel app” a web based application to help them bring their solutions to life. With the proper understanding of Visual design the students were given insight into how to make their work visually appealing. At the end of the exercise, the students presented at least 2 slides of what they had been working on to the rest of the team and they were critiqued. These ranged from an app to help farmers sell their product in the convenience of their homes to one that can help you find parking anywhere in the city.

Now, you must be wondering who and why the Developers Students Club (DSC).  Well,Developer Student Clubs are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies.Students from all undergraduate or graduate programs with an interest ingrowing as a developer are welcome. By joining a DSC, students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and build solutions for local businesses and their community. The students are gearing up to take part in the solutions challenge 2020 and the purpose of the workshop was predominantly to equip them with the right skill set through design thinking processes, technology and product design and Human Centred Design to aid them on this journey.

The solutions challenge 2020

For this challenge, students are invited to develop solutions for local community using one or more Google products or platforms.Participants are then invited to submit their solution and a 2 minute demonstration video on how it can be used. Entry is limited to one submission per person, built between 30 January 2019 — 30 March 2020.Submitted solutions must use of one or more Google products or platforms including, but not limited to: Google Cloud – utilizes GCP to provide scalability Server less functions, Kubernetes, ML Services,Data engineering, Android, Flutter, Actions on Google, Tensor flow. Submissions will be evaluated based on the following criteria: Impact (50),Technology (40) and Scalability (10).

Up to 10 Winning Teams will receive an invitation to a meet and greet with Googlers. Winning Teams will also be interviewed, and their stories will be published on Google Developers channels. Safe to note that the previous winners of the challenge were Ugandans. Find out more about the solutions challenge here.

Conclusion

The workshop ended with a quick talk from Timothy Masiko who is one of the boot camp students at Refactory. He shared about technological languages, their pro’s, their con’s and how best one can use each and integrate them to serve the bigger picture.

In just one day, the students had are well rounded understanding of product and technology design, Human Centered Design and design processes. After such progress, it’s safe to say the students got the most from the workshop and are ready to take on the Google solutions challenge.

We were thrilled to spend our day with young, enthusiastic students that seek to use their skills, talents and expertise to make the community a better place. We look forward to another one and wish them all the best in the solutions challenge 2020.