Mercer Island juniors Jasmine Louie and Kelsey Yin know the busy lives of high schools students. Between homework, athletics, clubs, work and social lives, perusing school websites for important school information and updates probably isn’t a high priority for most students.
And so, they came up with Bolt, a student iPhone and iPad application built for students by students.
“As busy high school students, we don’t have time for a difficult school website. They’re so complicated and we only need specific information,” Yin said, mentioning teacher e-mails, schedule changes and school cancellations as examples. “It’d really be nice if we had the information right away, and Bolt would solve that problem with the application.”
Bolt would work by pulling information from the user’s school website and then letting the student user select what they’d like to know. It would focus on daily schedules, announcements, calendar, lunch and contacts. Students would simply have to enter their classes into the app and then the information would sync from the school website to their iPad or phone. In their presentation, Yin and Louie plan for Bolt to partner with different school districts, which would pay for the app to make it available to students for free. Students would log in with their last name and Student ID.
For phone-friendly Mercer Island students who, according to Yin and Louie, generally have 2-4 extracurricular activities on top of school, Bolt would save a lot of time and just make life easier.
“This is personalized and it’s everything [students] are looking for on one app,” Louie said.
“We want to make it simple and the students will do the least amount of work as possible. That’s why they pick their classes at the very beginning and they never have to do anything again. It’ll automatically be synced, and then all they have to do is open the app and everything will be right there,” said Yin.
Louie and Yin first presented Bolt as a teen entrepreneurship culminating project for their marketing class with Kristine van der Hoeven at Mercer Island High School last year. They came up with a written business proposal, which was voted by their fellow marketing students to go on to a competition judged by a panel that included members from Angel Investors. Bolt won the competition.
Since creating the project for class, Louie and Yin have met with mentors to figure out how to improve the application. They met with professional developers, getting feedback on cost and production, and began working with a fellow MIHS student developer. They’ve also entered Bolt for the DECA competition as an entrepreneurship innovation project plan.
Ultimately, the pair has their sights set higher for their student-created app.
“We decided this is more than just a DECA project; this can actually be used,” Louie said.
Louie and Yin hope to have a fully functioning prototype by Jan. 8 for the DECA competition.