The Burger King employee who answered the phone, her voice clear and loud through a speaker hooked up to a laptop in the center of a room, was genial enough. She was no doubt expecting the caller, 17-year-old Kasey, to ask about hours or refunds or anything at all.
“Hi!” Kasey instead said cheerily. “This is actually a test for an app we’re making.”
Both she and Kasey hesitated for a silent moment. Finally, Kasey offered, “Um, it’s working.”
Another pause.
“She hung up!” Kasey laughed, and the rest of the 25-or-so kids in the Ron Sandwith EX3 Teen Center study room laughed along with him.
Burger King was just one of the local eateries listed in “Food for Homeless,” the graphically simple but functionally finished smartphone app that Kasey and his three teammates had designed for the Federal Way Boys & Girls Club’s App-A-Thon last Friday. The team’s plan was to design an app that could give hypothetical homeless shelters looking for food donations a speedy way to check in with willing businesses.
“Our ‘Food for Homeless’ app helps homeless shelters find food from restaurants, cafes and schools that would normally go to waste,” Kasey said a few minutes earlier when introducing his team’s app, just before the demonstration that would lead to a brief conversation with the puzzled Burger King worker. “At my school, I noticed the lunch lady was throwing away extra food. And I know for a fact that most fast food places, when they have unused food, they just throw it away.”
“Food for Homeless” was one of five functioning apps produced by five teams assembled in only that day. Other completed apps included “That’s So Punny,” a joke-generating app that produced delightfully groan-inducing plays on words (example: “Why can’t birds follow directions?” “Because they like to wing it!”) with the push of a button, and “Graphicz,” an app with motion suggestions and video demonstrations to help athletes better practice good form. “Food for Homeless” was the most altruistic of the bunch and ended up being judged the best app of the afternoon.
Mark Hendricks, the executive director for the Federal Way branch of the Boys & Girls Club of King County, said events like the App-A-Thon give Boys & Girls Club attendees the chance to be in an element that comes naturally to youths – the creative and tech-focused project channels restless afternoon energy and, as a bonus, can give some of the program’s more hardscrabble members a glimpse at possible futures.
“Things like this, the App-A-Thon, they learn a lot,” Hendricks said. “Gets them thinking; maybe they get interested in doing this as a career.”
It’s no idle fantasy. The smartphone app market has exploded in recent years. In February 2015, data aggregator firm Statista said that the worldwide mobile app market in 2015 would be $41.1 billion and $101.1 billion by 2020. A study by Flurry Analytics found that, in the second quarter of 2015, the average U.S. consumer spent 198 minutes per day on mobile apps – about 30 minutes more per day than they spent watching television – and Pew Research has reported that 68 percent of American adults now own a smartphone.
A pair of AmeriCorps volunteers were also on-hand to oversee the event and offer tips. One of them, Isabelle Giuong, tried to keep the frustrated kids’ perspectives wide and spirits high.
“This is their first app,” Giuong said. “I told them, ‘If you’re having problems then you’re doing it right!’
“We love technology; kids love technology. We do anything we can do to get kids interested in the field.”
Furstration was intermittent but always a danger, of course, since things are never as easy as they seem before they’re started.
“They were thinking that, by the end of this, they’d have an app like you’d use on your phone,” Hendricks chuckled.
Frustration and setbacks, however, weren’t signs of failure.
“Some things worked, some things didn’t work,” Hendricks told the collected kids. “That’s technology. Some apps, to make them, it takes months. So you guys did a great job today.”
