Links to the previous posts on the Memorado #hackweek15:
Day 1: https://goo.gl/x0xlKU
Day 2: https://goo.gl/2Hz1gY
And we are hiring: https://jobs.lever.co/memorado
It has been some time since the last post but we wanted to wait until all 4 apps are live and for those of you who know iOS review processes: it takes some time.
Quick recap on Day 3 and 4: both days were fully dedicated to coding and preparing the App Store upload. On Thursday, we had the demos on the final products — and here they are:
Team “Refoodgee”
Description: Gives volunteers the opportunity to invite refugees to cook and share a meal together because food is something that we all share
Technology: Uses Parse for quickly building a backend to exchange data
Result: Live on Google Play and promoted with a sweet animated video
Key learnings:
- Super important to visualize user flow and create clear wireframe screen structure
- Conduct focused brainstorming sessions, not ad hoc throwing around of ideas without a clear goal/outcome
Team “GoGive”
Description: Making it easy to donate by showing the user charity centers close by that are in need of clothes and other support equipment
Technology: Uses NodeJS for a simple backend to allow donation centers to log on and enter needs
Result: Live on the iOS App Store, live landing page & backend for donation places and refugee homes to sign up with their location and needs
Key learnings:
- Quick, regular meetings work much better than longer, less frequent meetings
- Organizing the development process without access to shared source control systems is challenging but possible
Team “Refugermany”
Description: Dynamic handbook for refugees with valuable information on the asylum process and the life in Germany, which is updated regularly
Technology: Uses Xamarin’s cross-platform technology since no UI heavy layout is needed
Result: Live on Google Play and the iOS App Store, live backend for editors to keep the content up to date, create new languages, cities, articles
Key learnings:
- Fixed deadline means feature list has to be flexible. Fixed feature list means deadline has to be flexible.
- Constantly challenge yourself to work on things that are 80/20 (i.e. 80% of the result with 20% of the effort) — one example is their sharing integration which is basically another article category called sharing thereby leveraging existing functionality to get 80% of the result
Team “Alles Klar”
Description: Connect German speakers with refugees that need translation help
Technology: Uses parse for quickly building a backend to exchange data
Result: live on Google Play
Key learnings:
- In this short amount of time, 2 retrospectives per day were extremely helpful to distribute tasks between the team
- Constantly update wireframes and flows to accurately depict current state of app production
Conclusion
When we decided to do the Memorado hackweek, we had a couple of goals:
- Bring our team much closer together & form a strong team loyalty
- Experiment with new cross-platform technologies & highly agile methods
- Have a very direct beneficial impact on society
When the teams postponed the planned cocktail night for hours to keep working on the apps, we knew we had achieved the first step. When after 3.5 days of development time, we really had 4 apps running on phones that will directly help refugees, we felt we had accomplished the second and third part.
Being a data driven company, we conducted a post-hackweek survey and here are the scores:
How happy were you with the #hackweek15: 8.5/10
How happy were you with the content/format: 8.0/10
How happy were you with the surroundings (place/food/setting): 8.1/10
and some thoughts from the team:
I really enjoyed the week and it is something I will remember my whole life!
I liked the hack week a lot. Firstly jumping out of the daily routine (work and personal) makes me more positive. Knowing colleagues not in the working atmosphere is also cool. I think it’s extremely positive for the company spirit.
In case you’d like to join our team, we are hiring!
So long!
The Memorado Team
P.s. Major thanks for the week go out to:
- Christian Wallin, founder of 42Reports who inspired us to do this #hackweek
- Ulrike Meier, founder of Freedomus, a berlin-based NGO helping refugees
- The whole memorado team for their dedication and team spirit day in day out
