Holy Trinity students in Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) and Design Thinking Class recently teamed up with Katrina Parrott (pictured) of iDiversicons, who facilitated the creation of their very own emojis.
Ms. Parrott, Founder and CEO of iDiversicons, started creating emojis that represented a diverse range of people and experiences. She got the idea when her daughter mentioned “that it sure would be nice to send an emoji to my friends that look like me.” Determined to fix this problem, Ms. Parrott and her daughter, Katy, created and launched iDiversicons in 2013, the world’s first diverse emoji mobile app in the Apple Store.
After sharing the story of how her business got started with our NFTE and Design Thinking classes, Ms. Parrott challenged our students to think of their own emoji. Students brainstormed in small groups to come up with different emojis that were not already created and they saw a need for. The students teamed up with Ms. Parrott, who worked with them to develop a diverse set of emojis and bring their ideas to life.
“The emoji creation process was very straightforward,” said Jorge Trejo, a junior NFTE student who created a fitness emoji. “I looked at the Apple emojis to see what emojis already existed and what didn’t exist. Then I sketched out how I wanted my emoji to look, and searched for a photo that looked similar to my sketch so Ms. Parrott had a better idea of how I wanted it to look. I’m very happy with how they turned out and will use them when talking with family and friends.”
Working with Ms. Parrott and her company, the students were able to see the whole process from initial concept to creation. Angela Miceil, Business Teacher, shared that “when they saw the finished product, our students were excited and learned how to apply the lessons learned in real life situations.”
After Ms. Parrott’s inspiring presentation about her road to creating the world’s first diverse set of emoji’s, she also surprised our students with their own Holy Trinity Tiger emoji. We are grateful for Ms. Parrott’s collaboration with our students and the example she has given them to pursue their ideas and inspire new creative opportunities!
You can view the student emojis HERE.
Learn more about Parrott. Link to iDiversicons website: https://www.idiversicons.com/
Link to her Parrott’s video: https://youtu.be/LimNX61wz8Q
