My first Hackathon
On Saturday October 12, 2019 I attended the LYLAS Labs’ day long Women @ Work Hackathon at the Flatiron School. This event was put on by LYLAS Labs and Powerbitches “to develop solutions combating gender disparities in the workplace”.
Each team included members from backgrounds such as Computer Science, Design, and Business. These interdisciplinary teams were tasked to “propose creative technical solutions to [one of the following issues:] the gender pay gap, workplace harassment, hiring for & fostering team diversity and inclusion, and benefits for the burden of care.”
My team, which consisted of Nasir Anthony Montalvo, Meredith Strickland, Emmanuel Owusu, Adriele Pradi, and Ariel Jakubowski, was tasked with “developing a solution to build awareness and educate the general public about Universal Family Care”. And our subject matter expert was Rachel Hills, CEO of Powerbitches.
The event lasted from 8:00am to 8:00pm. However, after considering breakfast, lunch, and presentations, each team had less than 9 working hours to synthesize and design/develop a pitch as well as a product/solution.
My team truly hit the ground running. As seen in the image included in this article, we started out by “white-boarding” our ideas.
We chose to focus on a case study to help guide the creation and features of our app.
In our case study, we considered the struggles that a women named Rita, who had recently suffered from a stroke, might have to deal with. Specifically, the toll this situation would take on her, and her caretakers; such as her daughter Jenny and others in her immediate network who would have to step up during this time.
We considered the amount of help and support Rita would require. Along with the considerations regarding what features would be helpful to her and her network during this time.
We decided that some important features included an Rx “Folder”, Day-to-Day Journal, “Team” Capabilities, Appointments, and Documents.
These features would help Rita, her daughter Jenny, and any hired care support, as well as family that are able to support from afar, to help Rita keep track of her prescriptions, important documents, appointments, and help her to maintain an organized daily schedule. Additionally the team feature allows team members to stay abreast on who is there to support Rita through her medical journey.
Next our team broke up into pairs to tackle different areas of our project from organizing and fleshing out a pitch deck, to designing and mocking up our app, and starting to code the final product.
If you are interested in seeing our final Invision prototype demo click on the link below and travel through one user flow cycle of our app:
Additionally, if you would like to learn more about our app and perhaps view our pitch deck you can follow this link to my personal website Rita page:
Our group worked very well together and I am so proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a short timeframe.
But wait there’s more!
Our team ended up winning the “People’s Choice” award at the Hackathon!
Included in this article is the book we all received, “Feminism. A Key Idea for Business and Society”.
Suffice to say I consider my first Hackathon to be a true success and team effort. Thankful for my team, our insightful subject matter expert, and of course LYLAS Labs for putting on this incredible event.
