Umeå Hackathon

Umeå University held a 24 hours long hackathon with the goal to get a solid concept for the University’s, soon to come, mobile application. We won the competition and were awarded the best concept and design. Our concept sets out to cover all major features with a dedicated social media platform with a slight twist to the ordinary social media setup.

By expanding on the concept of hashtags and creating 3 kinds of tags to each post: #name, @location, and &time, we create a social media flow with direct information and an easy-to-use interface. Posts can be created to anything like events, questions, and maps, etc. Through this platform, each Union house and the program can easily communicate events, menus, and information with other students. The same goes for the staff of the University to be able to communicate with the students with ease and vice versa. Students can report damages and suggest improvements and upgrades to the University facilities, and every student can see where it’s not too crowded to sit and study. Notice that the likes are displayed as reindeers to match the University logo.

I learnt how to generate ideas and design efficiently under enormous time pressure.

As mentioned above, we won the hackathon and we were awarded the best concept and design. The price consisted of a trip to the HQ of Microsoft in Sweden. There we got a crash course in Microsoft Azure and insights on how Microsoft developers go about their day and what they expect from students like us.