Autism App Jam 2014 Kickoff
Team Black Jack begins.
Yesterday, UCI’s 2014 Autism Appjam officially kicked off. If you don’t know what that is, students from all different majors get together for two weeks to help build a new piece of technology to help people with ASD(Autism Spectrum Disorder). The website can be found here:
http://www.forockids.org/appjam/
The event was held at the beautiful Beckman Center, slightly off UCI Campus, I arrived there a little early, and saw the team setting up the registration area filled with SWAG~
Swag:
- Autism Appjam T-shirts
- Google bags, earbuds, bottles, stickers
- Intel bags, pens, hats, puzzles.
- Design Books
At first it felt a bit empty but people arrived in droves, when the registration started they had everyone take a name-tag and colored stars to represent skills we could do to help build the app, for example red for front end development, silver for UX/UI Desgin, and yellow for “Ideas Guy.” This was to help the registrants who signed up without a team.
When the event started you could tell, there was excitement in the air, this was not my first Appjam, but it was the biggest one I’ve been at. After the introductions, they had two speakers, UCI Professor Shanon Alfaro, and Chapman Professor Erik Linstead.
Professor Linstead, talked about how he loved being a CS Professor, but the one moment he regretted it was when his daughter was diagnosed with ASD, and he felt helpless because he could’ve been a neurologist or behavioral psychologist to help his daughter.
He then made a joke, how his mother loves to say that her son is a Doctor, but not the kind that helps people; however he is making a point, that actually people who know how to program can do something to help. That is what Autism Appjam is about, people from all different background making a piece of technology that can help people with ASD. Coding is very powerful. He went on to give advice, that one of the best ways to think of an idea, is just to make something simple that can make it feel normal.
Professor Alfaro took a different approach and made everyone do a lesson on empathy. She told the audience to stand up, take a 2 add it to PI, turn around, stand on one leg, multiply the number by two, sit down, stand up, turn around while flapping your hands, turn that number into binary, look intently at the person next to us, take the two’s complement of the number, and then asked what the number we got was, “1001 something,” someone meekly says, then asked what were all the instructions that she said to do, “…,” silence. This was a lesson in how someone with autism doesn’t have the sensory filters that we take for granted, there’s so much stimuli, that it can be paralyzing. She has two children with Autism, and passionately speaks about her dream for her children, and the slow realization and doctor visits that lead to the discovery of ASD. The doctor recommends her to not get too attached to Jacob, or give him nicknames like Jake, because he most likely will not have a nickname, or graduate from school, or have many friends, and be able to empathize. 1 million dollars from the government, and $600,000 dollars out of pocket researching every thing, and trying a whole bunch of things, like cooking Quinoa before it was popular, or buying expensive medical equipment, Professor Alfaro says, Yes it is worth it, and how grateful she is to the students who are working to make an app to help people with ASD.
After a Q and A from previous competitors, a list of prizes are shown, and groups are quickly formed. We already had a group so we registered quickly, Team Black Jack, approiate because we met each other in Professor Alfaro’s Class. After that some light refreshments outside, (mainly cookies and brownies), I talked with a few people, and headed back home excited to start on this two week adventure with my teammates.
We actually already had an idea, inspired by a short speech from Professor Alfaro in her class.
Hint:
Team BlackJack members:
Me: Erick Kusnadi
Stevanus Iskandar
Gerardine Montebon
Raymond Lee
Today, we’ve this blog, twitter, facebook page, and also participated in Student Shark Tank (tomorrow’s post) where we got to pitch our idea to random people for prizes as part of the Celebrate UCI event today. The plan for this blog is to detail the experiences of building an “app” in two weeks for 2014 Autism AppJam to help people with ASD.
-Erick
