Ideation

We began to brainstorm using a who, what, why ideation process in an attempt to narrow down what values and features we wanted for our platform. From here, our team began rapid sketching features and screens that would propel us into creating high-fidelity mockups. We settled on designing for a mobile application, since our target users would be young adults who would most likely own a mobile device.

Mockups

Our mockup screens showed the overall flow of which features we wanted to include in our mobile app, Undoculink, as well as flesh out how the app would look visually. By taking inspiration from channel chats like Slack/Discord, and from social networking sites like LinkedIn, we established a modernized, forum-like framework that could be more exploratory for our users in connecting with mentors or other industry folks. We knew that we wanted to accomplish the following:

• Choose whether they are an industry mentor, or a student user

• Select several hashtags that they feel interests or represents them

• Have those hashtags place them into an aptly-named channel for people in those communities, much like Slack or Discord

• Be able to ask questions, and get responses from industry mentors (highlighted in yellow)

• Look at a mentor’s profile and be able to message them for more information/a deeper conversation

Conclusion

The very real nature of the problem we were trying to tackle - empowering undocumented immigrants living in the US - was incredibly eye-opening and insightful because many of the attendees were undocumented themselves. For many, personas weren’t as necessary because they themselves had lived through these struggles and experiences, and could relate to the group they were designing for. Designing a mentorship interface became a challenge when we realized that undocumented students weren’t our only stakeholders; industry mentors would be our stakeholders as well, and it likely meant that we also had to consider allies’ perspectives and desires in the design process.

One crucial critique that was brought up by one of our hackathon mentors was balancing that relationship between mentors who were allies, and undocumented users - how could we make the experience equal and welcoming for both parties?

Personally, I learned some lessons of my own; #stayhacking2018 was the first hackathon in which I had to take a PM role within my group, since the other members had little-to-no prior experience. I struggled to delegate tasks to others and tried at first to handle everything myself - ideating, sketching, presenting, designing the mockups - until I broke down into tears in the middle of the night from the stress. I realized that in order to be a successful leader, I needed to loosen the reins and delegate tasks to the other members on my team for the sake of efficiency, good communication, and my own wellbeing. I accordingly relinquished some of that control over to my team members, and focused on designing the mockups with a clearer frame of mind.

In conclusion, my biggest takeaway from this hackathon was executing smart leadership: a truly good leader delegates and balances out the workload, so that no one on the team (including themselves) feels overwhelmed.