Claire Ma - YiA Internship 2021

30/04/2021

In the Young Innovators Awards of 2020, all of the work took place during the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand so the theme for innovation was the pandemic.

1st place in the Junior Category went to Claire Ma for her innovation SOAP. SOAP is a platform to pair volunteers with elderly people who need to remain in isolation. You can watch Claire's video and see her worksheets here.

As part of her prize, Claire won a 2 day internship at Cucumber for her to develop her idea and design a prototype of her app. It was a very full 2 days.

On Day 1, Claire spent time with our Chief Strategist, Peter McHannigan, and they worked through the Lean Canvas process so that Claire could think more deeply about her idea as a business model. In Peter's words "Claire's a clever and passionate cookie - that's for sure! Before Claire came in, she read up on all of the topics that we were going to cover - she even read up on how to code! Using her new found knowledge, she then drafted up examples of the things we were going to discuss. This is before we had even explained anything. What a legend!"

Here you can see Claire and Peter whiteboarding and deep in thought.

Claire says "Personally I would like to thank Peter for being such an amazing and inspirational strategist, if it is not for him I would still be thinking that my idea is close to flawless. He introduced so many new ideas and mindsets to me and I am sure this 'gift' I received from him will benefit me forever. I am so grateful that he is able to identify the strong and weaknesses my ideas withhold and help me to find a tactical way to tackle those weak points."

Next Claire worked with the Cucumber designer Katrina Abbott on the app itself. From the photo below, you can see how they designed the flow of the app for all of the different user types. This then led to a design of a number of the screens of the app - you can see images of the app in this article. If you want to click through the prototype screens go to Claire's SOAP Prototype

After the process, Kat said "Claire was an amazing intern and I really enjoyed working with her. She has a very strategic, mature and well-rounded way of working and is honestly full of brilliant ideas! No wonder she won YIA! I don’t doubt that she has many successes awaiting for her in the future. Can I also add she has a great sense of humour 😃"

And Claire's view "A huge thank you for Kat (thank goodness she is not sick of me for asking so much all day) for building up my unrealistic idea to an incredible model. This really pushed my idea to another level as I can now visually see how the whole thing flows. Her works are truly amazing! And she is such a kind guidance to have in my life."

When the prototype was complete, Claire spent an hour chatting to our Mobile Developer Tony Lin to talk about all of the technical considerations you need to keep in mind when building an app.