In the tech industry there is often a thick divide between business operations and engineering. Since most business-side people don’t know how to code, their ideas are met with skepticism from more technical people. As a business person, I have never attended a hackathon precisely because I felt like I didn’t know enough code in order to be helpful. So when my fellow Tradecraft’er, Sheba Najmi, sent an email to everyone about Protohack, I signed up immediately. Protohack is the first code-free hackathon for designers and business people.

Going into the event, I didn’t exactly know what to expect. At the very least, I thought it would be an opportunity to spend a day of exploring a business idea and having fun with some friends from Tradecraft.

I picked up Molly Inglish and Scott Hutter on my way down from the North Bay that Saturday morning. When we arrived at the event, we decided to form a team together and we recruited Sheba to join our team, as well.

Getting started

After listening to an inspiring keynote speech from Sprig founder Gagan Biyani, it was time to get down to business. The problem was, we didn’t have an idea yet. We spent the next hour or so brainstorming ideas and came up with a wide range of ideas from an app that aggregates user photos at a live event to an app for presenters to get real-time feedback from audience members. We discovered there were already apps for some of our ideas. For instance, I came up with an idea for an app that provides an hourly pass to a nearby gym but Scott said he had seen Gym Surfing on Product Hunt the day before. However, we liked the idea of exploring the exercise space since it could have a real impact on the health of potential users and it resonated as a personal goal for our team members.

A clear, compelling use case

Molly and Scott are in the UX (user experience) design track at Tradecraft and Sheba was previously a UX designer as well, so they helped us create a persona for a potential user. This process was interesting for me to be a part of since I had never done it in the past.

OK, so now we had a bit of a framework around who we might target as a user. Additionally, Sheba and Molly had been trying to schedule a regular time to get some exercise together during the Tradecraft program without much success, so they could offer first-hand user pain points. We then started to explore some ideas that fit within the persona of Steve and ended up with an idea for an app that provides quick (ten minutes or less), user-generated exercise suggestions based on location. Given the ten minute framework, I came up with the name TakeTen because I liked the alliteration, which gave it a catchy ring.

Then it was time to work on some low-fidelity mockups.

It was right around this time that we hit a wall. We were hungry, a little tired, and not quite sure if we were headed down the right path. We all had a ton of assignments on our plate from Tradecraft and some of us contemplated heading home to work on them instead. We ultimately decided to stay and focus on getting our prototype ready.

Great images trump design specifics

Molly has lots of visual design experience and is really fast with Pixelmator, so we decided that was our best option for creating the screens. Scott and I were tasked with finding pictures that looked like they could be user-generated, but also looked appealing. Finding the right pictures proved to be really important because they looked great and drew in the eye of the audience and judges easily. We purposefully didn’t limit ourselves to the constraints of the iOS 7 design elements because it ultimately doesn’t matter for a prototype. A basic prototype only needs to convey the core idea in a simple, compelling way.

At this point we still had several hours left, but they passed by in the blink of an eye.

Rehearse and stay within the allotted time

Sheba crafted a great pitch and Scott and I helped refine it while Molly plugged away on Pixelmator and I linked the screens together in InVision. Sheba and I then ran through a few rehearsals with a timer to make sure we had the flow of the demo down and to make sure we were good on time. The next thing we knew, we were on stage presenting to the judges and the crowd. The timekeeper was being diligent about cutting people off at one minute, but Sheba nailed it and we finished up with a few seconds to spare.

We saw awesome pitches from other groups, including some of our Tradecraft compadres, and then we sat and waited while the judges tallied up their scores. The top five groups would have the chance to come back on stage to answer questions from the judges and they would use that information to determine 1st through 3rd place. At this point I thought we had a decent chance of making the top five. Sheba being her usual diligent, extremely prepared self started researching the industry to come up with some relevant stats to reference if asked by the judges.

One-by-one, the organizers called up the top five. If memory serves, we were the fourth or fifth team called up to the stage, which caused us some anxiety. Sheba provided a quick recap for the judges while I cycled through the screens again. The judges then gave us feedback on the prototype and business idea, but surprisingly didn’t ask many detailed questions. Their feedback included a suggestion to partner with gyms, companies, and/or personal trainers, as well as general feedback on the details of the visual design.

I thought we were going to place second or third, for sure. There were other prototypes that looked a lot more polished than ours and one in particular had a great social mission behind the idea. But low and behold, we won!

The rest was a blur of flash bulbs from the paparazzi, job offers, and champagne, of course.

Key takeaways

• Include great images: Humans love looking at awesome pictures. I imagine this would work great at a regular hackathon event, as well.
• A clear, compelling use case: Come up with a persona early on and preferably work on an idea in a huge market.
• Rehearse and stay within the allotted time: These events are really long and everyone is getting tired by the time the pitches start, so respect the time constraints.
• Have fun!

Follow us on Twitter: @lylemckeany, @snajmi, @mollyinglish, & @scottandthesea