We conquered VIT’s overnight Hackathon owing to our hard work!
A new day, a new hack! Hello there, and welcome to my journey through yet another hackathon! But what’s new this time? If you must know, we not only made it to the finals but also won first place in the design track! All thanks to my dedicated, hardworking, and focused squad comprising of Ashi Mittal, Radhika Bhoj, Ruchi Dwivedi, and Vikas Shetty.
Entrepreneurship Cell or E-Cell of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) hosted their annual E-Hack starting on the 30th of April, 2021. E-Hack is a 15-hour hackathon that challenges you to come up with effective solutions to major, real-world issues. It’s a test of determination, endurance, and creativity.
There were five different tracks to pick from, and my team and I settled on the design track. The event began with an opening ceremony during which the event, requirements, and procedure were briefly outlined to us.
Certain prerequisites, such as a concise overview of our timeline, a general idea of our style guide, and our responsibilities as a team and individually, had been planned ahead of time. This helped us sail through the night quite smoothly.
At precisely 10:30 p.m, 30th April, we got the problem statements. We took a few minutes to consider some of the issues before selecting the Covid Health App in light of the current circumstances.
Let’s jump into the hackathon!
1. Problem statement (revised)
Our users are experiencing physical, behavioral, and emotional distress because they are not receiving valid, authenticated covid information. There is a great deal of ambiguity and confusion, as well as a scarcity of resources, information and infrastructure. Our solution should provide our users with a one-stop application for all of their health-related issues during the pandemic, including oxygen cylinder supply, organ donations, and hospitals, among other things.
2. Research
We had about an hour and a half to submit an abstract concept for our project. We had clear clarity in terms of the procedure we wanted to follow as we had prepared our schedule ahead of time. We got straight to work on some secondary research that included- competitive analysis, digging up user stories, research on covid, and returned to the call in about 45 minutes.
Note: We had to rely on the internet for most of our research due to the odd timings of the hackathon(12 am to 1:30 am) inhibiting us from having 1-on-1 conversations with our target group (covid-positive individuals).
3. Define
We shared what we’d learned and came up with, and followed the 5W’s and 1H technique to get better clarity with whatever we had picked up the past one hour.
Post this, we were able to formulate the problem brief and submit the concept idea to the organizing committee at 12am, 1st May.
My team and I are concerned about the impact covid has on each individual’s life, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, social, or economical. As a result, we’ve devised a solution that can provide our users with a location-tracking platform that will assist them in obtaining the assistance, support, and services they need to combat the virus. This covers oxygen beds, cylinders, plasma donors, organ donors, vaccination facilities, hospitals, and isolation wards, among other things.
4. Ideation
We then went on to constructing a mind map, which assists in the practical organization and arrangement of compiled information relating to a specific topic and also to get a rough idea of what features we are to have on the app.
And writing our target audience’s user stories are representations of small instances in people’s lives that allow us to empathize with the users and create ideas based on their experiences considering their pain points, frustrations, and motives.
Note: we depended on users’ social media posts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.) to gather user stories because we were short on time.
Now that we had our research and thoughts penned down, we could strategize and come up with viable options. We did so with the help of dot voting, i.e, voting on the value of product proposals, functionality, usability findings, and everything else that needs to be prioritized by putting colored dots or in our case, Figjam stickers 😉
Lastly, we used the MoSCoW model (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have at the time) technique to help prioritize our needs, functions, and ideas. This gave us a clear picture of what we were designing.
** HIGHLIGHT **The most exciting part of ideation was the use of Figjam, Figma’s new online whiteboard! Say buh-bye 👋 to all the other tools out there cause Figma has definitely upped their game! From cute and vibrant stickers, emojis, sticky notes, flow chart tools etc. Figma has really made itself the one-stop app for everything design! 🙌😻
5. Design and Prototype
For our own ease, we first worked on creating the site map/user flow for us to follow through while designing the wireframes. We used our competitor apps, and our ideas to work better on the same.
We simultaneously also worked on finalizing our design system i.e., the colours (primary, secondary, CTA, etc), the typeface, the buttons, etc.
For the High-fidelity design, we didn’t have enough time and so we split each user flow between our teammates to work on it independently but in coherence with each other’s designs and the design scheme. We were on a deadline, so it was very difficult, but we persevered.
Click here to view our prototype!
6. Final submission
We were asked to upload a video that briefly outlined our proposal, as well as a case study and a link to our prototype, and they were to determine if we would advance to the next round based on this submission. At exactly 11:50 a.m, we submitted our project. We felt relieved, pleased, and optimistic with our performance. We were notified at 2:00 p.m. that we had been chosen for the final round.
The final results were out on May 2nd, at 9:30 p.m and we won the first place in the design track!!! and as our prize, we were given a cash prize of Rs. 6000 and swags.
This money was to donated to our mentor, Manprit Kalsi who works tirelessly to teach 500+ students every single day, for free!!!! With the aim to provide each and everyone with help and support that can help them grow. We’d like to express our gratitude to you, sir, for what you’ve done for us.
If you're looking for guidance on your UI/UX journey, be sure to join Kalsify Academy.
Overall, it may be said…
This hackathon provided me with a great opportunity to push myself to do better. Despite the fierce rivalry, I was able to remain focused and demonstrate my abilities. I was excited and inspired throughout the day, which helped me excel and give my all to the team. This is definitely an experience I will cherish for a lifetime as I was not only able to learn but also, most importantly, make new connections!
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a hackathon and make the best of your time there!
~ Thank you for being such a lovely audience! Please feel free to share your thoughts on this post. Stay safe! ❤️
