Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Fairy Lai

A recap of UnderCloud, a pilot plus design challenge for SpaceAppsToronto

On April 28–30, I participated in the SpaceApps Challenge Hackathon in Toronto. It was my second hackathon as a designer, and I came across a big challenge.

The last one was more like a designathon where a lot of designers got together and solved challenges the company is actually facing. It was a very design-focused challenge. However the SpaceApps one, was very technical. When I walked in on a Friday night, I saw many many many many coders…And after I joined a team, I was concerned.

What to do? Should I keep silent and be a“make it look good” person?

I was lucky enough to meet two open-minded developers, so I managed to step up and drive user-design principles to the project. And I would like to share a few points that is important to successfully apply user-centred design in a highly engineer-focused environment.

Project UnderCloud

For those who are interested to what we did, please check out the UnderCloud Project presentation deck , and there is also a video record of our presentation on Youtube, our team’s presentation starts at 25:00.

1/Step up when you are needed

The team-forming process was very interesting, all the people who are interested in a specific project will get together and decide their teams. The challenge we worked on is Pilot Plus Challenge from NASA.

When we were discussing all the possibilities, and I soon heard lots of technical stuff going on about programming languages, applications, database…I soon realized that we jumped too fast to the product itself! I finally stepped up and voiced my opinion: we have to define the target users first, and build an MVP based on user requirements and time constraints. I was so lucky that my teammates all agreed that and we started a fun discussion with fun airline experiences and crazy ideas going on.

Work station: notes, laptops, and food!!!

2/Be the moderator and project manager

As the discussion started, things began to get chaotic as people soon were attracted to some random direction and ideas were jumping around. So there should be a moderator documenting all the ideas people mentioned, as well as guide them back to the track. Also, this person also need to lead the discussion later to decide what to build considering resources and constraints, including people, skills, hardware, money…The developers will play an important role in identify technical difficulties and defining feasibility.

After we finished the session, we already got a fairly solid direction and a few features we would like to implement during these two days. We also need a manager to set up a clear timeline as hackathon is a short intensive making slot so time management is extremely important.I drew out the timeline, and wrote out tasks we need to finish by the deadline, and then started assigning tasks based on personal skill-sets and preference.

You also need to control the scope of the project based on limited resources. An minimal viable product is good for a hackathon, so when someone is too ambitious, kindly give a reminder will help.

Our white board session

3/Apply user-centred design methodologies and principles

This part should be the most important part of the process. After I got the consent from team members, we started with the discussions and ideation, soon we turned to the user flow and quickly drew out a few screens to do a design critique and iterate based on feedback. At the time of 11:30pm, we got a clear understanding of what the product would look like.

Hackathon is a very intensive yet hands-on activity, so in my opinion, it is better to quickly do some research and define the scope, then spend the rest of building a prototype.

Snapshot of the prototype

4/Build the prototype, explain the design rationale in the presentation

Try your best to use your design expertise to finish the prototype. Also, I strongly encourage you to step up in the presentation to explain the design rationale and process of creating the product. Prepare the slides and practice presentation, ready to present 😀

For me, the most precious experience is public speaking. It has been a long time since my last public presentation. So this time, as the first one to present I was kind of nervous, and with the video recap I noticed I didn’t have a lot of eye or verbal interactions with the audience, and I was always looking at the laptops. So this was a valuable learning session for me!

Me presenting user research findings

Key takeaways about Hackathon for Designers

1/Step up, contribute, and bring your own impact

Surrounded by a bunch of engineers, designers may get frightened but I want you to understand your real impact and value for the team. You are much more than a “make it look good” person and your team will benefit a lot from your guide and direction.

2/Plan B:Be flexible, prepare to face any happenings

Hackathon is only an activity, people can come, people can leave. One of your teammate may leave and join another team, the other one may call you and tell you he won’t come because of an incident, another one may disappear after the first day. You may also find that people can’t finish what they’ve promised. You may even find yourself sick of this after working 12 hours constantly on the first day.That’s all OK.

It is the time to show your flexibility and the ability to handle emergencies. Always have a plan B, the focus of a hackathon doesn’t necessarily to be code, it can also be a prototype. If you can’t find your developers, if the demo is not working, use the prototype. A functional prototype is way better then a not functional live demo.

3/Be confident, but control your expectations

A weekend hackathon is only 48-hour-long, don’t worry that you can’t finish the whole product, don’t worry that your product is too rough.

WE ARE ALL THE SAME.

Other people are not all superman, they all need to eat and rest. If you can’t do this, don’t think you are the only one. As a designer, you already prove that you are creative, responsible and hard-working.

But at the same time, don’t treat yourself to hard. Understand your what you are lacking and need to improve, accept it and work on it later.

4/Learn in a hackathon

This should be the whole point of participating in a hackathon. Winning a prize is cool, but there are few prizes, so focus more on what you can learn from others, what you can improve later on your own, how to collaborate with others and meet other people who are amazing and talented like you!

5/Enjoy some food!

Best reward 😀

Big boats of sushi catering

Good luck!

Fairy is a product designer who is dedicated to utilizing technology to better connect the world. Welcome to connect me via Dribbble, Linkedin, and Twitter.

Bring Your Impact: How I Applied User-Centred Design in a Hackathon was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bring Your Impact: How I Applied User-Centred Design in a Hackathon

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