Matt’s Story: Applying Early Lessons to Real-World Engineering

For Apps for Good alum Matt, growing up in a coastal Cornish town meant sometimes feeling isolated from opportunities available elsewhere. “Being down in Bude… you can feel quite disconnected from the rest of the country,” he reflects. That changed when his IT teacher introduced Apps for Good as an extracurricular course during his GCSEs in 2011/12. “These big schemes did help to pull us into what felt like a bigger pool of similarly minded kids,” Matt recalls.

Matt and his teammates developed ‘Pocket Planner’, an app to help students manage school life including timetables and homework. The idea was born directly from their own frustrations, and the process of independent learning, user-focused thinking, and presenting ideas stuck with him. “Coming up with your own idea is by far the most motivating way to do it,” he says. A standout moment was pitching on stage in London - an experience far removed from the usual classroom routine.

Now an electronics design engineer at medical technology company Smith & Nephew, Matt works on devices that support wound healing - a field he never imagined as a student. While he was always interested in IT and electronics, the essential skills he developed through Apps for Good proved invaluable when he graduated and moved into the world of work. “The technical side was no problem,” he explains. “But it was ‘How do I present those ideas to people? How do I ask for help? How do I interact in an office?’ The Apps for Good learning came back to me at that point. Having that early exposure to it was certainly very, very useful for me.” Matt also credits the course with helping him understand the value of careful planning and building products based on a deep understanding of the need, an approach he now uses in his engineering work every day.

His advice to young people considering an Apps for Good course? “Seriously, just do it… it’s something that should really benefit you for the rest of your life.”