Girls in Tech creates an annual 48 hour Hackathon for Humanity in multiple countries to inspire female developers, product managers and designers to come up with solutions to some of the worlds challenging issues such as homelessness, affordable housing, economic disparity and transportation. This November was my first hackathon which I provided my product and developer skills to guide a team of 4 to tackle how we could create a mobile app to help the homeless population in San Francisco access the social services with a streamlined process.
We arrived on Saturday early morning and didn’t leave until Sunday evening. As a team we were allowed to sleep at our sponsor’s Docusign headquarters since we need to be in constant communication throughout the development process. We definitely underestimated how long it would take to brain storm an idea but once we agreed about a solution everything moved much quicker.
Below I will go over the process that we followed in order to implement everything and come up with a rapid prototype within the 48 hour timeline.
We implemented Design Thinking to brainstorm and execute our ideas. The stages that we followed were:
- Frame a Question
- Gather Inspiration
- Generate Ideas
- Make Ideas Tangible
- Test to Learn
- Share the Story
Frame a Question
Since we had about five areas to choose from we chose to find a solution to one of the many problems facing the homeless population in San Francisco.
Gather Inspiration
At this stage we had to imagine and empathize with what sorts of issues that someone in this position would need to deal with on a daily basis.
Generate Ideas
We know that many social services agencies struggle with outreach and to provide the necessary fiscal aid since homeless persons often move around and may not have access to bank accounts. So we came up with a system that would allow people to donate to homeless individuals in need using our app to digitize charitable contributions to the agency and allow the homeless to get the help they need.
Make Ideas Tangible
Then it was time to make low fidelity wireframes so that the team could see how the app would work.
Test to Learn
Once we decided on the wireframes we created prototypes which we iterated many times before delivering the final product.
Share the Story
We created a skit along with our presentation to illustrate the value that this mobile app would create for the local homeless population to a panel of judges and other teams.
After 48 hours the team was exhausted, but happy that we thought out the box to come up with potential solutions to solve San Francisco’s most pressing challenges helping its homeless population with an empathetic vision.
