Wannabe

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Inspiration

As Latinas trying to break into the tech field we haven't seen many people who like us in the field. . Women, especially women of color face many barriers going into tech, so we wanted to change that. Currently Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women only make up about 4% of technical roles, and we wanted our app to smash stereotypes and encourage women to go into tech. Oftentimes, in our computer science classes, we’ve been the only women, and have been called “Wannabes”. So, we were inspired to create our app Wannabes to reclaim the term and reduce the immense gender inequalities in tech.

Additionally, we noticed that most tech, especially the learning platforms were designed in a very masculine way. So, we wanted to break that stereotype, so we designed Wannabe in a very feminine way with a very pretty UI as we wanted to reclaim the idea that coding is only meant for men.

We want to be the premier education and mentorship hub for women and other gender minorities trying to break into tech. In a study from the Harvard Business Review, they found that the most effective way to retain women in tech was to provide mentorship, and that’s exactly what our app does. Wannabe is built BY WOMEN and it is FOR WOMEN. As women we have experienced first-hand being left out of tech, only 2% of tech roles are held by Latina women, and we want to change that.

What it does

Our App works to encourage and retain women in tech in a few different ways. (1) It provides in depth lessons design for women about anything tech related. Women can go to the app and learn about anything from tech careers, how to code, or even how to hack a hackathon. (2) It connects women with mentors based on what they're learning. If a women is stuck on anything, they can reach out to their mentor for emotional and technical support. (3) It provides a community for all women in tech. Wannabe works to reclaim the term and gives all women a home and community in their tech journey.

How we built it

We built the app using Figma! We plan on using the code from Figma to export it into an iOS app but we spent the majority of the time figuring out how to tackle stereotypes.

Challenges we ran into

As we're both really new to tech, we struggled making all of the connections between the frames to work. But, we didn't give up and were able to figure it out!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're reach proud of how the UI on our app turned out. We really wanted to make something that was very girly and catered to women, especially those who have felt outcasted for their love of pink. We really wanted to reclaim the message that women aren't meant for the field and change that. Our view is that coding has NO gender; and a girl who can code can still be feminine.

What we learned

We learned that we are capable of building an app! We've been told so many times that we weren't smart enough but we did it and we're incredibly proud of ourselves!

What's next for Wannabe

The next step for us is to implement Wannabe into an iOS app and release it so anyone can use it! We truly want to help reduce the gender inequalities that exist in tech, especially as it pertains to women of color, so we want women to be able to learn more while connecting with mentors to support them :)