Design and Enterprise Week - Expedia volunteers work with budding entrepreneurs

The next generation of budding entrepreneurs from New North Academy in Islington recently worked with a group of 15 volunteers from Expedia Group as part of the school’s Business, Design and Enterprise week. Over 220 pupils from Years 3, 4, 5, and 6 worked in teams to design a new interface for Hotels.com with the aim of helping people to search and book hotels on a mobile device. Each year group was assigned a different target audience and tasked with designing the interface to meet that audience’s needs.

During special assemblies and workshops throughout the week, the Expedia, Inc. volunteers shared insights from their day jobs in branding, content, and design, as well as tips on presentation and pitching skills. The week rounded off with teams presenting their interface ideas to Head Teacher, Nicola Percy, and a panel of four judges from Hotels.com. Year 6 pupils came out victorious and were treated to a trip to the Expedia, Inc. offices where they received a tour, some Hotels.com goodies and were surprised with a digitally designed mock-up of their mobile interface.

New North Academy extended their thanks to the volunteers, saying:

“It was an excellent opportunity for our pupils to apply and develop some of the important skills they have been learning this year, such as confident presentation and public speaking. Everyone was thoroughly impressed with the way the children tackled the challenge with their creative ideas, teamwork, enthusiasm and behaviour. The children and staff would like to extend a big thank you to the wonderful volunteers from Hotels.com and to the BIG Alliance who invested time to set the challenge, run informative assemblies, carefully judge the final entries and inspire our children.”