Lessons Learned From My First Hackathon

In my opinion, first impressions do not simply apply to humans whereby we are only constrained to our physical interactions with a new person. However, first impressions can also apply to new experiences and situations that you are being exposed to for the first time.

On November 5th, 2017, I had my official first impression with Hackathons at The Knowledge Society's (TKS) Hackathon held at McKinsey & Company in Toronto. Tasked with creating a solution to a problem that personally affected us and addressed the criteria of either, making our lives easier, saving money, or making our lives happier. I along with my three other TKS innovation group members geared up for a mentally intensive session for the next 7 hours.

The Brainstorming Process:

We started off our time together by properly getting to know each other and effectively understanding what our personal strengths and weaknesses were. This critical first step, saved us a lot of time further down the line when time became scarce and the intensity of the situation grew. Further down the line, we did not need to ask who had a particular skill set or understanding of a subject because we all knew from the start that we would work well together.

After establishing names and skills we moved on to the brainstorming session that was split up into three interrelated steps:

1. Individual Brainstorming
2. Collective Understanding
3. Shortlisting

We began by taking appx. 10 mins to ourselves and jotting down any and every idea that came to mind on sticky notes. The rules were simple, no idea was too dumb, too out of reach or too crazy. All we did was write them down. This allowed our creative juices to get flowing and harness the billion dollar ideas that were hidden somewhere in our minds. Following our individual sessions, we placed all the sticky notes on a whiteboard where we all got the chance to elaborate on our ideas. While discussing our individual ideas, we found ourselves connect our new found concepts to earlier topics of discussion. Through this collective improvement, we saw our ideas increase in potential exponentially. Finally, we shortlisted all of our ideas to the top 3 by reviewing the guiding criteria for the Hackathon as well as factors such as feasibility within the timeframe of the Hackathon.

After carefully following the above structure, our group selected an idea that had been further improved through the combination of a number of different ideas. We collectively agreed upon creating an app/website called PLANit that would curate personalized travel itineraries based on factors such as budget constraints and theme of activities (Thrill, Nature, Amusement) with the built-in flexibility to change and edit the itinerary to fit any sort of personal activities. With the tagline: "Taking the Pain out of Planning", we all felt that there was a serious need for a resource like this in our lives.

Development:

With a strong and well thought-out idea in our minds, my group set out to make this idea a reality by dividing and conquering the items required for our presentation. Drawing upon our previous conversations regarding strengths and weaknesses, we easily assigned tasks such as creating a User Interface (UI), coming up with a business plan, branding for the product, and the mapping of our presentation slide deck. We grabbed some coffee and put on some old 80's tunes and went straight to work. Just like a well-oiled machine we were working away, with the sound of typing keyboards and vigorous clicking on out trackpads.

During this process, I was tasked with the creation of the UI for the app and the page layout for the website because of my previous skills with graphic design. However, even with my knowledge of graphic design, designing UI was something I was not familiar with. I did the one thing I always do when I need to learn something new quickly, I went to Reddit. After reading some of the top voted posts and finding a helpful guide on UI, I was unofficially anointed a Reddit expert in UI design. From the information I learned from the Reddit guide, I proceeded to download Sketch and start my search for a template adapt for our UI. Soon enough, through some trials and many errors, I gave the group a rough design on our UI that we could effectively apply to our company.

While I was working on the UI, the rest of my group members had started on the presentation slide deck and proceeded to properly outline a business plan and strategy for "PLANit". All of that combined with the UI and graphic designs, gave us a completed project 15 mins before our time was set to finish. Our group took this time to do a couple of run-throughs of our presentation to make sure it was ready. One of the things we focused on during the presentation was something we had learned during one of the workshops I attended, which was:

"Don't get into the mindset of selling your idea when presenting. Just tell the story in a way that is comfortable" -Navid Nathoo, Executive Director of TKS

This quote resonated with the group and following that workshop, we made sure that we were not doing anything gimmicky or attempting to sell the idea more than we needed to. The group understood that this was something that all 4 of us would personally use, so we would at least have 4 users. When it came down to presenting our ideas to the other groups, due to time constraints, all the groups that were to be chosen did not get the chance to present. However, that did not discourage us from going back to school the next day and presenting our slide deck and ideas to our friends for feedback.

Three Main Takeaways:

1. Even the dumbest sounding ideas have potential. When brainstorming ideas, never write something off as being dumb. All ideas while brainstorming come as solutions to a problem that you are trying to prevent or correct. Although an idea may not be realistic or absurd, the problem is still very valid, and that can be used to your advantage. If you stumble across a bad idea, then look at the deeper problem and see if you can turn it around something more realistic!
2. Always get familiar with your group. Beyond just asking them their name, really get to know them. Try and find our their favourite Premier League team or what their favourite Tech Start Up is. Spending time getting to know your group members and their strengths and weaknesses helps greatly in the long term. Rather than stumbling later on when assigning, understanding strengths prevents using up scarce time during a Hackathon.
3. Would you be the product's first user? Ensure that whatever the product or idea is that you would benefit from its solution in some way, shape, or form. If you keep this mentality, then it is much easier to keep a personal motivation and standard for quality when designing the product. Due to the fact that you know what you would want to see on the user side of the experience. This mentality also helps when coming up with ideas because who wouldn't want to make their own lives easier by solving a problem they're dealing with while maybe making money at the same time.

First Impression of Hackathons:

My first impression of my first Hackathon with TKS was incredibly positive. The whole idea of creating and innovating new ideas in a short time period with new people with different skills is a great formula to accelerate learning. I personally came out of the Hackathon learning more in the 7 hours than I did all week at school by acquiring new skills such as designing User Interfaces and how to operate Sketch. I also learned the most efficient way to brainstorm idea and how to increase the available time by simply getting to know those around you.

I strongly encourage anyone who still has not been exposed to a Hackathon, to go out and do so. Progress is the medium that propels society. It is more crutial now than ever for youth to be the pilots of change. The learning that comes from the emersion within experience is invaluable to the progress of our global community.