Every Designer should Try a Hackathon
No coding necessary
A couple weekends ago I had the pleasure of participating in a Protohacks event in Toronto. The topic of the hackathon was education, with the challenge centred around creating a product that met the challenges of today regarding at the intersection of education and technology.
This was my first hackathon ever, and as a new entry into the field of design, I wanted to see how I would handle an unfamiliar situation with new teammates in a problem space I knew very little about.
Coming into the weekend I had no idea what to expect, I thought that I would be the weakest link on the team and drag down my first place team. Which was honestly a pretty big fear of mine.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen over the weekend, but I did learn some pretty useful things.
Not everyone you work with thinks like a designer
And that’s a good thing.
In our world, words like human centred design, user testing, wireframes and Sketch get thrown around a lot. This can be a little daunting for people listening in who aren’t designers (I forgot how daunting it was when I was the person on the outside).
And it’s not just the terminology that can confuse people, your insistence on creating sketches instead of “just making it” can sometimes fluster teammates who are new to the process.
It’s easy to forget when you hang around with designers that not everyone thinks like us.
A key takeaway from the weekend was that as designers we should look at how we can improve the UX for non-design team members to help them better understand the process.
New Team, New Dynamic
For most of us we work with the same people for an extended amount of time, whether working for a client or building a product, chances are you see the same faces around the coffee machine.
With a hackathon, you are thrown into a room, where you have to make a team, come up with an idea, prototype it and present it.
You’re not a 100% sure of everyone’s skill level, core competencies or how they’ll react in the face of opposition. This group dynamic, for me at least, hurled me out of my comfort zone, and brought me back to the first day of middle school.
You’ll need to establish a team dynamic, understand strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies and fast. The clock is ticking, so there really isn’t any time for icebreakers and saying some interesting fact about yourself.
Think About the Business
Part of where our team messed up is focussing too much on the actual design of our product and not so much on the viability.
In the design world, it’s usually someone else’s job to determine market penetration, ROI, marketing campaigns, implementation and profit margins.
During a hackathon, with only a couple hours to build a product, you need to not only do user research but also market research. While someone is conducting interviews, someone should also be looking at the latest market trends to see if what you’re about to make is going to make any actual money.
This hackathon taught me to consider the needs of the business, always, because (from a business perspective) what is the point of building something if no one is going to use it.
Have Fun with It
At times it was stressful working with a team I barely knew about a problem I didn’t really understand. But we eventually built something and presented it.
But even before the building, the people at Protohack put on a great weekend with really interesting speakers, good food and even free beer.
It’s quite fun working with new people, you get a fresh perspective you might not always agree, but at the end of the day hopefully, you’ve learnt something. Our team even went for beers after the event and I look forward to keeping in touch with them.
So try a hackathon today, who knows, you might just learn something new.
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Hope you enjoyed and if you want to get in touch or see some of my work you can find me here at my home on the web.
