How we run a successful UX/UI design hackathon?

On 27-28th March 2021, we had a great UX/UI Design hackathon, that successfully finished 🥳

The hackathon is an incubator for new product ideas. As a part of our Bootcamp, the students get to work together in teams, towards the same objective for a client. The challenging part is to come up with a solution in just 48 hours!

This hackathon brought creative minds together to tackle the challenge given by our Learning partner, Traders Alloy. This is an early-stage start-up concerning Financial Markets for ordinary people. They already have a desktop application, and they like to offer a mobile application. So this is where our students jump into.

The teams developed four innovative and fresh UX/UI design solutions for a mobile app. They have learned a lot during the hackathon, about their colleagues, their skills and also about themselves.

The Who

This time around, we had 15-students on the line to work on the solution which were grouped in teams of 2, 3 and 5. After they were briefed by Traders Alloy, they rolled up their sleeves and jumped on implementation.

The What

The objective of the hackathon was to design a user-friendly mobile app to complement a web app by offering users a workspace for their stock investments when they are out or at their day job.

The How

It is amazing how each team did so much in just 48 hours. They did everything from stakeholder interviews to high-fidelity prototypes and finished with stakeholder presentations.

In between, the teams did user interviews, based on which they managed to take away key insights on the product’s usability. Applied the methods learned on the Bootcamp to create user personas, user journey and task flows. After all of the research and competitive analysis were conducted and laid out, our students jumped to sketching.

Testing and probing various versions allowed them to move on to the next phase where the product was being defined – sketching and prototyping.

The Support

The teams received support from each mentor, guiding them through the whole experience. The team of mentors for this hackathon was: Ana Trandafir, Martin Tenovski and Dimitar Tutkovski, each an expert in their field, and a member of Brainster’s team of instructors.

Martin Tenovski, Ana Trandafir and Dimitar Tutkovski

Petter and Andrew (Traders Alloy) provided grand support to each team – being available for any questions on the business domain and giving invaluable advice, so the team can reach their objective!

The final solutions

The teams work tirelessly over the weekend, to build a viable product, around the clock. Here you can find the result of their hardworking, dedication and teamwork.

UX/UI Design Hackathon_Traders Alloy — Team 1 - Anita Miskovic, Tea Prpic Pozgajcic, Sergiu Clipei

The winning Team

And the winners of the hackathon is … Team 1, with Anita Miskovic, Tea Prpic Pozgajcic and Sergiu Clipei.

Congratulations to the entire team for your massive hard work and success.

Team 1 –Tea Prpic Pozgajcic, Sergiu Clipei, Anita Miskovic,

The client’s feedback

“We really enjoyed the hackathon experience with Brainster. It was well organised and structured which meant that we could focus on interacting with the students so that they could get the best learning experience. The students were hard-working, innovative and did not hesitate to interact with us if there was anything unclear.

To sum up, we want to give Brainster and the students that participated in the hackathon our warmest recommendations.”

What Traders Alloy said about each solution presented by each team:

Sincerely impressed by the level of team-work achieved that resulted in a solid example of UX professionalism.

Creative minds that demonstrated a solid process and keen understanding of the ‘customer needs’. We were impressed what a team of only 2 people were able to achieve.

We really liked the thorough work team 3 did with the user personas and the user journeys. These two elements is core to nailing the UI/UX of any application. For the prototype itself we liked the clean design and the way they kept the features and were able to transfer it to a great mobile experience.

We were impressed that they managed to incorporate learning as a central feature in the prototype. This is inspirational for us, since we today have a web applications and a separate blog. The prototype was also well thought through with innovative navigation features.

The Experience

It was an amazing experience for our students – they got to work on an exciting and challenging project in a fast-paced setting and even though we started to feel the tiredness and pressure as the hackathon was about to be concluded – we buckled up and enjoyed the ride! There is nothing that we cannot do when we work together!

What did students say about their experience from this hackathon?

I loved working in this team. Even though it was a challenging and intense weekend, we all were included in each stage of the project and tried to give 100% each. I would say we supported each other and did our best to be equal team players.

Working in a team environment has definitely helped me. All team members were insightful, supportive and involved!

“Ana was there for our questions and support. It was really a great experience. Although sometimes was hard to keep up with concentration and energy, in the end, everything came together and the outcome was amazing.”

I love working in a team, I enjoyed the experience, and I am so glad I was a part of this Hackathon!

I think it was very well organized! We received a lot of support from Traders Alloy, even more than I expected! We also had immense support from our mentors at all times.

Even though the hackathon was virtual, the students had fun coming up with ideas and collaborating on the finished product. This is for sure one of the most memorable ways to spend a weekend!

We like to congratulate and thank everyone involved in this very successful hackathon.