Hacking Innovation

Hackathons are all about bringing together a diverse group of people who are passionate about innovation and want to push the boundaries of design and development. Guidewire recently invited 85 participants from 12 countries to take part in its first-ever virtual hackathon. It was a great opportunity to put Jutro, our design system and UI framework, through its paces and to see the creativity of Guidewire partners on display.

A total of 17 teams took part in the event. Participants included front and backend developers, UX designers, and SMEs. Internal Jutro experts provided guidance and coaching, sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experience.

The focus of this hackathon was on generating solutions in the area of claims submission and intake. At the beginning of the hackathon, teams were given a series of real business challenges to jumpstart their builds and promote creativity. They included a mix of ideas ranging from building components to enriching and extending claim details screens to development of a full-blown microapp. In all instances, participants were able to reference Figma for storyboards, components, and other resources.

Because the majority of participants were new to Jutro, we also constructed a hackathon microsite to onboard UX designers and developers. Creating a central place for support tools facilitated knowledge discovery and skill development. The hackathon microsite hosted our design system documentation, which provides guidelines and best practices for working with Jutro components and patterns. In addition, participants could use the site to enroll in learning missions that introduce the basics of designing and developing with Jutro. These self-paced exercises covered a variety of topics, such as how to customize the look and feel of Jutro applications and tips for working with metadata.

One of the primary goals of this hackathon was to inspire other teams to take a design-minded approach to problem solving and solution finding. While it’s frequently engineers who participate in hackathons, UX designers play an integral role in helping to articulate the user’s perspective and tell a story that is clear, concise, and compelling. Before the actual building starts, for instance, it’s important to ask questions like:

• What are we trying to solve for?
• Who is our target persona? What are their needs, goals, and motivations?
• What will our users and stakeholders consider to be a successful outcome?

UX professionals drive these types of conversations and enable their teams to quickly identify, prioritize, and scope features and products. Hackathons typically unfold over a period of less than a week, and that means you’re going to have to make some tough decisions about where to invest your energy. Interdisciplinary collaboration is key to balancing your vision with what can realistically be achieved in the allotted time.

And the winners are …

Judging criteria at this year’s hackathon was based in part on how well teams leveraged UX principles and best practices. Competition was fierce, but the winning teams distinguished themselves by incorporating narrative into their designs and making users the hero of their own experience. Check out the top four projects below:

Team LOGOS (aka EY EMEA)

Claimed the 1st place prize by not only telling a very dramatic story but also integrating the standard European accident reporting form, autocompleting a significant part of the claim, and leveraging Guidewire Jutro and AI to create a compelling mobile experience.

Users can upload a completed accident statement, which will then populate details for loss location, impacted vehicles, and vehicle damages using Google Vision AI. ©Guidewire Software

Fincons Italy (aka Fincons SPA)

2nd place for simplifying the e2e claims process through automation and creating their own theme, which all resulted in a very fluid user experience. They also integrated their company car damage photo recognition system with Jutro as a business component.

Fincons Italy used straight-through digital processing to simplify claims submission and payments. ©Guidewire Software

Tech Titans (aka PWC America)

2nd place for their roadside assistance experience combined with damage detection to file a claim. They wrapped their Jutro app using Capacitor to make it a native iOS and Android application.

Tech Titans’ app, UnStranded, gives customers the ability to submit service requests in seconds using AI-based damage analysis and real-time tracking. ©Guidewire Software

Digi Tribe (aka Cognizant)

3rd place for developing a micro app with new intelligent options for completing claims adjustments.

Digi Tribe created a simplified page view for managing activity notifications. Their Activity Manager app comes with pre-defined contextual filters and a search function. ©Guidewire Software

What’s next?

Guidewire UX has been hard at work synthesizing findings to improve and build upon future hackathons. These will contribute to improvements in the Jutro Design System and enable us to address gaps in Jutro designer and developer journeys.

Winning hackathon teams are invited to present at Guidewire’s annual conference, Connections, in November. In the meantime, tune in next month for a discussion on how Guidewire is transforming knowledge discovery for Jutro.