A few days ago we launched a Halloween Challenge through our Instastories. We asked our followers to use the app to program the spookiest Halloween creation and the results were amazing! After a thrilling voting session, an impressive ghost won by more than 50 votes. The creator behind it is 15-year old Alice, who comes from Uppsala in Sweden. We decided to have a chat with her about the challenge and her experience with imagiLabs so far - which is a bit different from that of most of our users.
When Alice was first introduced to imagiLabs, one of the very first things she did was to work with us. “The uncle of a friend of mine was working at Ericsson”, Alice remembers. “imagiLabs used to have an office there, and that’s how he heard about it. He helped us so that we could do our PRAO there.”
For the non-Swedes reading, PRAO is a work experience program that high schoolers do as part of their education. In Alice’s case, she spent a week in our office together with her two friends Sara and Felicia, the two blonde girls sitting down in the image below. Alice is to the right, wearing a pink shirt. She is pleased with the PRAO experience and says that it has taught her a lot. “I expanded my knowledge about tech and programming,” Alice says. “It was a very educational and fun experience.”
During the year that have passed since the PRAO, Alice and her friends have continued being active within the imagiLabs community. All three of them are now part of our imagiGirls, our group of amazing teenage ambassadors. Together, the imagiGirls have provided us with invaluable feedback and ideas, participated in workshops and starred in our marketing campaigns. During this time they’ve also had fun using the app and gotten more passionate about coding. “What I like the most about programming is that there is always something new to create, at least for me who is new in the field,” Alice explains. She concludes: “It is fun to create”.
A good opportunity to create presented itself when the Halloween Challenge was announced. Alice seems to have had no second thoughts about joining in. “It’s always fun to participate in challenges!” she exclaims.
She came up with the idea for the ghost because it fit the theme so well, and decided to go for it. To create it she first programmed all the lights to be set to white. She then proceeded to add the black and grey colors, since those were more spread out. “The reason I made it like that is because it’s a shape, and not a specific pattern. If that would have been the case I would have been able to create it in a more efficient way.”
The Halloween Challenge is the first coding challenge that we have launched, but it won’t be the last. Already, a series of new challenges has already been planned out by the team. Personally, Alice is hoping for a Christmas-themed challenge to be announced. Only time will tell if her wish gets fulfilled as we aim to make the future themes a surprise - but no matter what they turn out to be, we hope that her and all of you will enjoy them. And of course we also hope that you will participate with your own creative solutions! “Just participate for the joy of it,” is Alice’s advice to anyone who wants to join in. “You don’t need to win. Just make sure you have fun!”
If you want to make your own amazing designs and participate on our many future challenges, sign up here
This article was written by Cecilia Reidefors, Digital Design intern at imagiLabs
