For the first time, the Bern University of Applied Sciences held the AppRun programming competition . Among them was a team of our apprentices, who not only developed 5 really cool apps, but also won.
We wanted to hear more from Kai and Dominic about the AppRun competition. Here is the interview:
Dominik and Kai, congratulations on your 1st place in the AppRun Challenge.
Can you briefly explain what the AppRun was all about?
Dominic: Yes, as the name suggests, the AppRun is an app development challenge. We, learners of the BFH and high school students, developed different types of apps in 12 weeks. The goal was to find the 'Treasure Hunt' treasure with the developed apps at the end.
How do we have to imagine the course of the AppRun?
Kai: The competition started with a boot camp. For this, all participants met in Biel. There we received a briefing and were taught the basics of Android development. Over the next few weeks, we developed the apps for the final "Treasure Hunt".
What kind of apps did you develop there?
Dominic: In total, we had to develop five functional apps: One app each for the treasure map hunt, a memory game, a metal detector, a Morse coder and a pixel painter. The Morse coder, for example, interprets any text and converts it into a digital signal. The signal is displayed by the app's screen changing between black and white.
What was the biggest challenge for you?
Kai: I would say controlling the cell phone functions correctly with the apps. For example, for the treasure map app we had to access the smartphone's internal GPS tracker, for the metal detector we used the phone's magnetic sensor, and for the memory game we couldn't do without the camera sensor for recognizing the image pairs.
And what exactly is this 'Treasure Hunt'?
Dominic: This was the last part of the challenge, the treasure hunt. There were five posts in total, where we had to solve puzzles with our own apps. So the better we had developed our apps, the higher the chance of solving the puzzles quickly and, most importantly, correctly. When we added up the points from the app ratings, we finally won.
In addition to the laurels of victory, did you gain some new insights from participating in the AppRun?
Kai: Together as a team, we had a lot of fun during the AppRun Challenge and, above all, we learned a lot about Android programming. Our stamina was also put to the test from week to week – giving up was not an option for us!
Thank you Dominic and Kai for your exciting insights into the AppRun-Challenge. We wish you continued success and fun in developing interesting apps.