How not to win a hackathon and build a great product at the same time? (Part 3)
Friday took us by storm. And we were as ready as we’d ever be.
On the way to the venue we realised that some of our applications were not accepted. Honestly, the applying process had several steps and it was not really clear (and a pain in the ass, ssh)… And now we were afraid that maybe everything was useless and we couldn’t participate at all.
Fortunately, we were not the only ones who faced these problems, so by the time we arrived at the venue (Millenáris Startup Campus), the organizer guys were working on accepting applications for several other people, too. We were in!
A bit about this hackathon. It started from Helsinki, Finland as a single hackathon named Hackjunction and soon they started a movement named JUNCTIONx which has now been held in several countries throughout the world — China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Vietnam and now in Hungary. The organizers provide their experience, the brand and everything that is needed to hold a successful event. Their aim is to provide the chance for everyone to create something meaningful in the tech industry which is a very noble goal, imho.
It is also a great opportunity for their partners to look for bright minds to work with which in this case has happened to us, too. But let’s not run so far forward.
Now, we were on the point of no return. Between a lot of young, talented professionals and university students from all over the world. Did we feel that it was too much for us? Maybe. Did we have anything to lose? Not really. The application was free after all. And all our colleagues, families and friends were cheering for us.
We started to discuss about the challenges again. It seemed that our first impression was correct, so we went straight to the Nokia employees to get to know more about their challenge.
What we came to understand is that they had their own call management API which they wanted to use to develop applications for service providers on the telephone network. E.g. this service would make it possible to obtain different pieces of information of phone calls or make conference calls.
The developer guys started to try out the API and us, girls started to come up with ideas for a possible product.
Some considerations that we have touched during brainstorming:
- Who are we designing for?
- What are they gonna use it for?
- What are the possibilities and obstacles?
- What other apps can be connected to our product?
- What could fit in 48 hours?
- What could be our MVP? (more like MLP)
- How could we all take part in the process?
- Who would pitch our project at the end? (It was not a real question because Zsófi and Ádám offered to do it which we all agreed to. At least this part was solved.)
To tell the truth, the ideation was not quite a design thinking process… Am I disproving myself? Maybe… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, in this case the end justified the means, because finally we came up with the idea that all of us liked:
a virtual assistant that gives you a helping hand in phone calls
(like Clippy from Microsoft, only cooler and smarter).
Now, that we had the winner concept we told ourselves that the best would be if we slept ourselves out, so we will be able to start fresh on Saturday.
To be continued…
- Part 4: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-4-4d1556f289c
- Part 5: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-5-fc7d37aadd55
- Part 6: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-6-ea3f073f3613