Miami Hack Week
Miami Hack Week is an annual, week-long event held in Miami, Florida that brings together some of the brightest minds in technology and entrepreneurship. It showcases cutting-edge ideas and innovative technologies. There are multiple houses with different areas of focus that individuals and teams can apply for. I was accepted into the UXDesignathon House, where UX designers put their skills to the test to create meaningful solutions to real-world problems.
• User Research
• UX / UI Design
• Team Lead
• 3 UX Designers
• 4 Mentors
Figma
One Week
4.6
Problem & Target User
4.6
User Experience
5
Visual Design
4
Innovation & Feasibility
4.6
Presentation and Wow Factor
Personalize
Matching hackers with the best activities, teams and bounties based on their interests
• Personalize your profile with interests, skills, and events
• Curated AI recommendations to enhance your experience
• Quantify value – measured connections, messages, events, meetings
Connect
Find other hackers, mentors, VCs instantly to facilitate easier in real life (IRL) engagement
• Searchable events, people, communities
• QR to make it all simple – check-in, connect, and save your new network in one place
Collaborate
Engage easily with people, organizers and sponsors nearby
• Chat with any person, your team, micro-communities and larger ones
• Be rewarded with Mantle Wallet coins by answering questions and being helpful, easing the work of organizers
• Gamification can support sponsorship by quantifying engagement and continuing their partnership with the city of Miami to attract top talent to their city
“Overall really well done. The research done to understand the user, problem and paint points was great. I really like that you interviewed the organizers (important stakeholders) and included their feedback into the solution.
The execution was awesome. I liked that you stayed on brand and created an easy to navigate app that looks great, and also solves a problem for hackers.”
UXDesignathon Judge
Miami Hack Week 2023
Unlocking the Hackathon Ecosystem
We uncovered multiple personas that we were interested in exploring: the organizer, the house lead, a sponsor representative, an out-of-town hacker, a “veteran” hacker and a “newbie” hacker.
We interviewed 25 people, using 10 main questions.
Unlike other teams, we split up interviewing responsibilities and we weaved our questions into informal conversations. We were able to uncover more personas with this method and also approach other hackers with more authenticity and openness.
Our main goals
• Understand the barriers in participating in Miami Hack Week
• Discover different types of hackers and their unique motivations and needs
• Identify opportunities where we could provide more value to hackers.
Sample Questions
• What’s the main reason you’re here for? (Parties, workshops, winning, fun building?)
• Have you been to other hackathons? Is this your first one?
• Have you encountered any challenges to getting set up at the hackathon?
• What do you love about what you do (hacking, designing, leading)?
Assumptions about hacker obstacles
While grappling the surprise challenge, and also in the process of forming teams, I started socializing with other designers to learn about the current obstacles they were facing and I started to form assumptions and hypothesis on what the solution might entail.
There was a general consensus that Miami Hack Week’s communication strategy was confusing.
Multiple streams of information (twitter, website, hacker portal, discord, text messaging, email, hacker house communication, whatsapp, etc) and areas to collaborate for the hackathon caused distraction and confusion
Based on the opening ceremony and the group participation survey about the crowd’s demographic, the majority was Miami locals - so I assumed a great deal of the hackers’ initial pain points would be specific to lack of parking in the area.
• While this was the case for a few, most people we encountered did not cite these issues.
Our findings: The need for IRL collaboration
Through talking to organizers, hackers, house leads, and sponsors, we identified several key pain points, including:
• Difficulty in finding like-minded hackers to collaborate with
• Disorganized communication between hackers, organizers and sponsors
• Confusion to accessing opportunities for networking and socializing
Main themes and insights
After synthesizing our data, we hit a critical understanding that while communication was a big point of pain, collaboration was at the core of all hackers’ needs. Most hackers disclosed that “learning” was their main motivator in attending Miami Hack Week and more than half cited that “networking” was a big motivator in attending as well.
Despite obstacles they faced, they were resilient in utilizing the hacker community and pulling together various sources of information to attend in-person. Prompt and clear sponsorship is crucial for organizers to prepare logistics ahead of time, and to subsequently announce plans so that hackers can also prepare ahead of time.
The Uniquely Multi-faceted Magic City has Global Potential
We analyzed three different tech festivals and examined their websites, branding, and communication processes. Some of our user research participants spoke positively of ETHDenver. With Miami Hack Week's recent addition of the UX Designathon House and the "Really Social Social Club," we decided to add SXSW to our list. We wanted to study the qualities of SXSW, an international festival that is both multidisciplinary and has put Austin on the tech map, and compare it’s similarities to Miami Hack Week.
Main Takeaways
Miami Hack Week and Eth Denver are unique among other hackathons, which generally are geared towards college students, centralized to one location and have a shorter time period to build.
Emerging tech and top talent are two key factors that create news-worthy events and generate buzz, leading to increased attendance in subsequent years. Increased attendance means more networking opportunities.
Opportunities
• ETHDenver and SXSW position themselves as global leaders, centered around technology. Miami inverts it’s unique value proposition, by drawing talent towards the Magic City’s unique culture and attractions. The dispersed hacker houses showcase Miami’s diversity and the unique length of the hackathon are two things that will draw talent in, and should be advertised heavily
• Both SXSW and Eth Denver have their own mobile app with updates and full schedule. Users have the ability to personalize and create their own schedule
AI Inspiration
We attended Iron Hack’s “Learn how to use ChatGPT for UX Design” event presented by UX/UI instructor, Juno Jo. ChatGPT has a search algorithm that scans a large set of data, and aggregates a response. Instead of relying on organizers to “manually,” answer questions and “matchmake” participants to the correct channels for support, we can leverage AI tools to do this work. This solution centralizes communication, and is enhanced by collaboration.
These insights were used to develop a problem statement…
“How might we improve the hectic hacker experience at Miami Hack Week by facilitating in real life collaboration and creating meaningful experiences with sponsors and organizers?”
Studies show gamification can convert loyal hackers
While thinking about how to increase engagement among hackers, I started looking into research on gamification, specifically at theme parks. I stumbled upon eye-opening research from Omnico Group. They surveyed 3,362 theme park consumers from China, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US:
• 50% of participants wanted an app to give them the benefits of a loyalty programme
• 61% of participants wanted access to exclusive offers and promotions
• 80% of participants would be inclined to visit a park again if the app allowed them to review their visit afterwards
A Starry Eyed Hacker Comes into Town
Even though we explored many personas, we decided to focus on the “out-of-town hacker.” According to Miami Hack Week organizers, this year’s hackathon participants consisted more of Miami locals, which differed from last year, which had more diversity. The primary user, Sarah Johnson, isn’t quite a “veteran” hacker nor a complete newbie. She’s a junior developer ready for new opportunities in emerging tech or entrepreneurship - and she’s willing to travel out of New York to find these things.
Prototyping Frenzy
We started testing our user flows and setting out our ideas onto one large whiteboard. We dived into using a hifi figma template, but we still had too many competing features and user flows. At this point in the challenge, we were at day 4 and had a lined up schedule to speak with mentors.
Zoning into the core needs of hackers
After frantically trying to stitch together a template to fit the needs of our hackers, we took a break and spoke to 4 different UX industry leaders and whittled down our main user tasks: personalized events, connecting and collaborating with others.
Adding the WOW factor to our final iteration
Armed with fantastic feedback from the mentors, a clear sense of direction and the energetic buzz of the hackathon, we started serious production of the final prototype one day before demo day and worked late into the early morning.
One aspect of collaboration we wanted to address was the temporary nature of an "annual one-time events app." How do we bring the collaboration that was fostered at this hackathon to the real world outside of Miami Hack Week?
Inspired by the Spotify viral marketing campaign "Spotify Wrapped." We wanted to showcase each hacker's contribution, activity and collaborations in a fun trailer animation that can be shared on their personal social media. This was the WOW factor that allowed Team NCK to bring home the UXDesignathon trophy.
What I learned…
It's okay to "think hard" about the problem before jumping into the solution.
We spent nearly 80% of our time thinking really, really hard. Taking two steps back and one step forward, or even spinning right back around, can help you gain a new perspective.
Listening is important; individual brainstorming followed by collective brainstorming can help us revisit the problem with fresh eyes and ears. My teammate's amazing sketching skills really helped us align and concentrate, especially in a chaotic hackathon setting.
Although this was only a proposed prototype, spending a bit more time researching how to implement the AI solution would've increased our "Innovation and Feasibility" score. Next time I'll be sure to carve out some time to do this research.