Juniors Ben Dravis and Micah Wasmuth won first prize in the IUPUI School of Information and Computing mobile app design competition on Nov. 6.

They had six hours to put forward an idea for an app, code it and present it in front of a panel of three judges.

Within the time limit, the pair had to create an app through Java script coding. Dravis said, “Both of us had very minimal knowledge of how to use Java scripts,” which is a coding language used in designing apps. But this lack of information did not stop the pair from finishing the task at hand in first place.

Dravis and Wasmuth were at the competition with computer science teacher Miss Ria Pereira. As their teacher, she was allowed only to mentor the two students. Wasmuth said, “(Miss Pereira) helped us with our train of thoughts.”

The theme for the competition was  “Dis/connection,” which was disclosed on the day of the competition. Pereira said, “We had no idea what we were getting into until we got there.” The duo created an app combining Hangman and 20 questions in a way for people to get to know each other.

Their first place win did not go unrewarded. Wasmuth and Dravis said they each received IUPUI gear, a $2,000 scholarship to the IUPUI School of Informatics and Computing and a $150 cash prize. 

“It was stressful, but a lot of fun,” Wasmuth said, who added that both he and Dravis look forward to any future competitions.