As said many times before, we believe that it’s important to give young people an opportunity to get a taste of work-life in a way that excites them and gives them a feeling of really doing a difference. This might help them find something that they really enjoy doing and maybe motivate them to study and pursue a meaningful career. Working with the younger generation also gives us a lot of valuable insight and new perspectives on what we do.
Even though we all enjoy our work here and get excited about it, it’s nothing compared to the level of enthusiasm we have witnessed at our office this fall. After the summer holiday season ended we again opened our doors to both middle school students doing their work-life experience (TET) and vocational trainees doing their work-based learning. A couple of weeks ago, we had a group of four TET students, led by our vocational trainee taking on a development project of their choice.
At the beginning of their training period, the students were assigned to choose a digital tool or service they would like to develop or improve. After some discussions, they decided to take on the communications tool between the school, students, and parents, Wilma. Watching how the students jumped on the task and started brainstorming and ideating was impressive. They also interviewed a few parents to get some user insight about how the current tool is perceived and what features they would appreciate.
Even though no one of the students had used Figma before, they owned the tool right away and started playing around with different design ideas. I wish you would have the same courage and confidence to just dive into something completely new also further on in life! Based on the insight they had gathered, and their own experiences, they started to think about new features that would be useful, as well as improvements to the usability of the current ones. During the design process, the students got consultation from our experts. For example, our Lead UX Designer Mikko Prami gave them a short introduction to visual design and the use of colours. He also gave them tips on some websites to be used as references when working on visual designs. The group really paid attention to what they heard, and they really nicely justified the different visual choices they had made in the final design.
On the last day of their training period, the students gave a presentation to the entire company about the results of their work. The clickable prototype that they had created with Figma was really impressive. It was also great to see how well they had worked as a team, and defined clear roles for everyone, letting them all use their strengths. And the best part was, that while creating something very nice and useful, the team managed to have a great time together and spread their positive energy to all of us at the office. The students themselves thought they had a great time and all said they would definitely join us for another training period.
The final prototype was really impressive
We want to continue collaborating with young people taking their first steps in work life, and we will always have our doors open for kids and students to come and learn together with us. Contact us if you know someone looking for a place to do their work-life experience. Also, remember that we are always open to discussing opportunities for doing internships and thesis projects with students at a higher educational level!