My Approach

The Build Back Better Hackathon was a 48 hour hackathon on the 19th-20th of September to bring like-minded people together virtually over one weekend to solve social and environmental challenges.

I was mainly working alone with some remote support from a developer to bounce back ideas.

Here I am going to share my approach and thought process throughout the event. 

18th Sep

The hackathon kicked off with a talk on the Friday evening.  To be efficient, this evening the focus was on:

• Choosing a problem to work on - “How can we help people in the many sectors (e.g. hospitality, travel and leisure) that may never return to pre-COVID levels, leaving many millions unemployed, to transition to green economy jobs?”;

• Creating a skeleton slide deck for the presentation on Sunday;

• Creating a calendar with time-blocked slot;

• And - not mentioned in the video - a mural board to track progress.

19th Sep - am

Late morning on Saturday we delved further into the problem and decided to focus on the aviation sector.

The focus was on conducting research to test three assumptions:

1. There were transferrable skills between the aviation sector and green energy jobs. (Findings: yes there was in fact one job for a safety engineer for a hydrogen plant mentioned that they were interested in applications from aviation engineers)

2. The location of green energy jobs were close (location-wise) to aviation jobs (Findings: many of the offshore wind jobs are not located near aviation jobs. However, some might be).

3. The salaries for green energy jobs were comparable to salaries for the aviation sector (Findings: Some jobs had comparable salaries)

19th Sep - 3 pm

By 3 pm on Saturday we had some user stories; functions for the app; and a basic user flow for a micro learning app to help pilots transition to jobs in the green energy sector. 

19th Sep - 4 pm

After talking to the mentor, we pivoted to aviation engineers; developed micro-learning for a career in the energy sector to take into account when different energy technologies will be mainstream; and realised I need to research government funding for retraining. 

The focus after the mentor call was to create a user flow for an  aircraft engineer using the app for the first time based on some user stores.

Then I created interactive wireframes using Figma and the User Flow Kit to demonstrate this user flow for some initial testing by simultaneously comparing the flow to the wireframes in Figma.

Figma is my preferred tool for producing wireframes for an app because it is free; you can drag and drop elements from the User Flow Kit; it is interactive; and you can have multiple users working on one set of wireframes at any one time.

20 September - am

On Sunday morning, we really only had the chance to test the user flow for the wireframes with a few people, and made a few changes (see wireframe changes below).

The first few hours on Sunday were spent addressing the gaps in the presentations and preparing a 5 slide deck. Any more slides than this would be too much for a 2-minute presentation

Then the rest of the time was spent producing an early-stage prototype.

Presentation

The final pitch presentation was a bit rushed but is on the left and the project is on Devpost here. 

Using Quicktime, I recorded my screen as I talked through slides 1 to 3; then I separately recorded my screen as I progressed through the prototype; then finally I just converted the last slide of the presentation to a jpeg image. 

Using iMovie, I then arranged all three media giving the final image a 20 second time slot.

Interactive Prototype (Early Stage)

There was time to polish the wireframes a bit so this is an alternative video for the user flow. 

If you want to see the prototype on Figma, click here.

The early stage prototype was created using Figma with Material Design Icon, Icons from Flat Icon and cannibalising of existing projects and free kits from Figma Crush.  

Insights

In hindsight, Iooking back on this hackathon, I should have included more information on the market size; need; and less time on the walk through on the wireframes. Also, to have a clear design system for the prototype and to test with members of green Slack groups I am a part of and not hackathon attendees per se. 

Since the hackathon, I have been informed that there is an episode of Outrage and Optimism where the CEO of BP talks about up-skilling people for green jobs. So, the market need is there. Just more user testing is needed to determine if a standalone app is needed or the use of existing learning platforms.