Context

I participated in a two day hackathon at Sea Limited with my teammates: Hoo De Lin, Bryant Khoo, and Wu Shitong.

The theme was "Uplifting lives".

Process

Brainstorm

While other teams who were experienced a hackathons already had an idea that they prepared and wanted to execute, we being new had to brainstorm from scratch within the timeframe.

We quickly discussed the kind of lives that we wanted to uplift, as per the theme. It ranged from students suffering from mental stress to housewives who often feel unappreciated. Ultimately, what came to our mind most was ex-convicts. They were on our minds due to a Channel News Asia documentary that recently aired on YouTube.

At that time, I was also playing a game called Kind Words that made me feel lighter. In this game, we sent anonymous letters to questions posed by others. It had a light moderation requirement and people tended to be kind as well, because there was no way to contact someone who sent you a response.

Because of these factors, we opted to create a product that could help ex-convicts on an emotional front, as it may be hard to find a community.

Product

For the product, we quickly sketched out the requirements:

• A messenger app, where only ex-convicts and government moderators can access.

• Anonymity of users were of utmost importance.

• User A will post their issue or their feelings. Other users can respond. However, User A cannot respond to such messages. Hence, it will be mainly a one way messenger.

  • This prevented further escalation if a message rubbed people the wrong way.

  • We have also included a report button to report any problematic messages.

  • The lack of response to a reply will also discourage any trolling behaviors prevalent in today's internet culture. Trolls thrive off responses and anger, and this system has discouraged trolls, as proven by the Kind Words game.

• Moderation was required to prevent negative messages from being sent and to monitor if a user requires further help.

Build

Shitong and I did the logic flows while De Lin and Bryant immediately started with code. Once the logic flows were clear, we handed this over to the developers and started doing research to back up our product.

With research done, Shitong and I worked on the presentation. I practice my presentation while De Lin and Bryant tested the product.

Sadly, I failed to record any of the sketches or flows that we came up with during this period.

Presentation

We ended up drawing lots to be the first one to present. This being my first hackathon, I was very worried but I also realized this meant I had no one to compare myself to. We went in guns ablazing, presented what we had with a good demo, and answered some tough questions with the panel consisting of Lei Lei and Professor Ben Leong.

After seeing how others approached the presentation, I realized there was so much I could've done and refined. It was a great learning opportunity.

Results

While our product was not as ambitious as others, we managed to win Most Socially Impactful.

This experience pushed me in terms of creativity and being willing to "just do it". I'm looking forward to my next hackathon!

To see the presentation slides, you can download them below.