In spring of 2014, Rob Richardson was sitting in his 150 person lecture and looked up. He noticed the vast number of bowed heads in nearly every lecture seat; these bowed heads were looking down at their phone screens. According to USA Today, this classroom injustice caused the 21-year-old and classmate Mitch Gardner, 22, to develop an app to raise those heads, darken those screens, and actually get students to pay attention in the classes they (or their parents) pay thousands of dollars for every semester.
The two created Pocket Points, an app that rewards students for locking their phones in class. The app detects when students are in a classroom on their college campus, allowing students to lock their phone after opening the app in class. As soon as students lock their phones, they start accumulating points, which later lead to discounts, prizes, freebies, etc.
Richardson and Gardner originally reached out to professors on their campus, trying to persuade them to get involved with the app by offering extra credit to students who reached a certain amount of points on the app. Professors refused, arguing that it didn’t make sense to reward students for doing something they should already be doing, and that is, paying attention in their class.
They decided to shift their approach towards local businesses and vendors. Richardson and Gardner went around to local companies and discovered that they had a budget for these kinds of things and that they wanted to sign on. Since then, TechCrunch reports, 1,200 companies jumped on board. Even larger companies, such as the Arizona Diamondbacks who are awarding free tickets to ASU students who accumulate a certain number of points, have jumped on the Pocket Points frenzy, according to a TechCrunch article.
Students can earn discounts at local food vendors near their campuses, such as free chips and queso at QDoba, a free 20 ounce soda from Topper’s, etc. Even campus-exclusive vendors have gotten involved, such as the University of Minnesota’s new donut shop, Sssdude-nutz. Students can also spend their points on discounts for online clothing vendors, including COAST Apparel and Ivory Ella, to name a few.
In just one year, the duo’s app went from a few thousand downloads on Chico State University’s campus to over 200,00 downloads on more than 100 universities and colleges nationwide. Richardson and Gardner have transitioned their focus from the classroom to the app, working on ways to further develop and improve it for college students' benefit nationwide.
