What We Do

There’s a scene in The Internship where Mr. Chetty (head of the internship program) says, “and what you have done as a team is connect to people and connect those people to information, which is what we do!”

At Hack It Hour, we help web designers and developers create a better online experience for the world!

That’s what we do.

Why we exist

We see a lack of effort and understanding from designers and developers towards usability, responsiveness, information architecture, user-centered design, and business objectives. We understand that even the fastest, fanciest website will fail if the end users don’t like it. If it’s not usable, they won’t use it. If information isn’t structure well, they won’t use it. If it was built for the company and to the executives demands (looking at you universities), they probably won’t use it. If your solution doesn’t solve the client’s or company’s business needs, that company may not exist down the road for the user.

How we help

We’ve built a framework for an experience we’re calling a ‘hack.’ A hack is a live experience over Google Hangouts and CodePen where designers and developers COME TOGETHER, INTERVIEW A REAL CLIENT, and BUILD A PROJECT TOGETHER. Of course, each hack is going to focus on building a project that is usable, well structure, user-centered, and a solution for business needs. Think of it as a masterclass where you get to participate and control the direction, while walking away with a completely unique experience.

Designers and developers will be able to sign up for ‘hack sessions,’ which are a two, four, six, or twelve hours long. The length of the session determines the complexity of the hack. Our framework allows us to turn a single hack into four different hacks by controlling a number of variables that result in different complexities, such as the number of included completed sections (planning, designing, etc.), the scale of the feature, the client expectations, etc. This works towards both of our benefits, because you get to choose a session length that fits your schedule and we get to make more from less.

What else

So, we’ve covered “what we do,” but I want to end with what’s next.

Next week, I’ll write and release a post about how we’ve developed Hack It Hour this far and what we’re working on, as well as our milestones. For the most part, Hack It Hour is going to be completely open source. Typically, software is open source-able, but we’re making our business open source. We want to be evangelists for the startup and business community by sharing every bit of our experience and strategy.

We believe in execution, which is why we feel safe sharing so much with the world about how we do what we do.

Chris Johnson, CEO of Hack It Hour