My Experience at Smart City Hackathon Hong Kong 2018

LI Shuhan 李书函
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

Sep. 1–2, 2018 | Hong Kong Science Park | Mobility, Environment, Living

Hackathon Pitching Session (Presenters: Anthea, Annie, Walter, Brian)

About this hackathon

Introduction

This Hackathon is about leveraging datasets provided by Science Park Data Studio and creating something beneficial towards the society, which can be a platform, an app, a product, etc. There are three topics to choose from Smart Mobility (our choice), Smart Environment, and Smart Living.

Judging Criteria

There are four criteria including Design: UI/UX (20%); Implementation: Use of Technology (30%); Presentation: Data Presentation, Processing and Analysis (30%); Business Value: Scalability, Fundability and Sustainability (20%).

The judging criteria above indicates the importance of data processing and analysis. In this regard, we should build up a team with good data scientists.

GetAway Logo (designed by Anthea)

Our Hack — GetAway

Inspiration

During weekends, people in Hong Kong like to escape from the city and travel to the countryside. However, there are challenges and frustrations in the experiences:

  1. Travelers need to spend time on research before the trip, as they are not familiar with the place.
  2. During the research stage, relevant resources are limited and not up to date. For example, Google Maps doesn’t have sufficient information about the route to the countryside places; travelers tend to spend lots of time and efforts researching from different sources of articles.
  3. During weekends, travelers tend to go to the most popular bus stop when they finish the trail, which results in a long queue.
GetAway Lo-Fi Wireframes (Tool Used: Notability + iPad)

What it does

GetAway is a single destination for people to travel to the countryside without the hassle. It provides travelers route instructions, queuing situation and waiting time. Our real-time data analysis tool helps them make the right decision throughout every touchpoint of the journey.

There are two main features:

  1. Diversion: GetAway provides estimated traffic level of each place in the upcoming weekend. This helps users avoid high-traffic places. Meanwhile, as per place, we provide different routes to commute the place, with real-time queuing data. By doing this, we further diversify the traffic.
  2. CarSharing: We offer CarSharing services to travelers who wish to call a taxi and share the cost. Travelers tend to finish their trail at 5– 6 pm and their first destinations often fall into the nearest MTR station. With similar time and destination, CarSharing service can be applied.
GetAway Hi-Fi Wireframes (Tool Used: Figma)

How we built it

  1. Collect real-time location from users.
  2. Analyse data to estimate the approximate time for the queuing at each bus stop, and predict the popularity/traffic level of the place.
  3. Present the up-to-date bus stop data and estimated queuing time to users.
  4. Help users make the right decision on every touchpoint.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

On one hand, plenty of time that users can save is the value that GetAway offers. On the other hand, many people in Hong Kong suffer from stress, anxiety, and depression. In this regard, we motivate users to travel to the countryside, which we believe it is beneficial towards both physical and mental health of our users.

GetAway Prototype (Tool Used: Flinto, Adobe CC)

What’s next for GetAway

Stage 1: We plan to spend the first month to fine-tune the prototype (prototyping, iterating, testing). This should be consolidated with extensive user testing. Then we plan to spend 3 months to code the product and launch pilot version on iOS and Android market.

Stage 2: We will start to promote it through social media advertisement and traveler communities in Hong Kong. By doing this, we will start to have real users using our product. We will then gather user feedback from them to continue improving the user experience.

Stage 3: After a mass number of users register on our platform, we will then have more data on hand and we are able to utilize those data to optimize users experience. For example, those reviews for the countryside spots help users to better understand the sight.

Result

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it in the end. The winning team in our cluster (Smart Mobility Challenge) built a prototype aiming to relieve peak-hour congestion by encouraging passengers to walk to a less crowded station with coupon rewards.

Reflection: What has done well?

Ideation

We developed this idea from our own experiences. Personally, I encountered cases like waiting in line for endless hours during a trip to Ha Pak Lai (下白泥). My teammate Annie also encountered similar cases, where a policeman was assigned to guide people to another nearby stop for the sake of diversion.

In this regard, this is really a problem that Hong Kong transportation system currently face: unfulfilled demand for public transportation in the countryside during weekends.

Pitching

During the pitching session, we did a short role play to demonstrate the frustrations of the travelers. This received a positive response as the audience and judges could easily understand the problem before we present our solution.

Reflection: What went wrong?

Data Collection & Processing

This hackathon provides us with the access to Science Park Data Studios. However, as our business model largely based on the data from our users. We can’t really leverage the existing database. This subsequently affects our python-powered backend code, where we have to generate some dummy data for pitching.

GetAway team photo

Final Remarks

This is my second time to join a hackathon. A lot of undergraduate students also participated in and impressed me through their pitching and prototype. I felt inferior at the beginning. But I gradually turn this negative feeling into positive energy. Now, I am motivated to work on my weaknesses and keep improving myself.

The final result does matter. But what matters more is that we developed a new business model together as a team. Every time I learn something new and meet some interesting people. At the end of the day, the journey is the reward.

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