When most people hear the word, “hackathon,” imagery of hoodie-wearing people come to mind where they type incomprehensible numbers and words into their computers at machine-gun speeds. “What are they breaking into? What are they stealing?” — you may be wondering.

Yes some hackathons are like that, but there are plenty where hackathons are ways to get communities together to solve problems using technology. I’d like to demystify the idea that hackathons are only for developers, highly-experienced people, or that you have to churn out a finished product at the end. Why believe me? Because I’ve done about 7 of them (and counting) and I want more design-thinkers to participate in them too.

The ones I’ve been to are mostly about solving community problems using technology or ways to promote interest in STEM fields. The role of UX designers for these competitions are more than just wireframes or prototypes. We play an important part in extracting what project requirements are, ideating different solutions, and marketing the MVP’s in the final presentations.

Feel like you’re not an experienced designer? Fret not, as the short timeframe on these (generally 2–3 days), make it less about “pixel-perfect” and more about rough estimates that could make a difference.

To give an idea of what designers could be doing at hackathons, here are some case studies:

#HackTheViolence Overview

This hackathon was purely dedicated to designers and people with marketing skills. Because there were no developers, we weren’t judged on development or code reviews. Instead, we were assessed on how well we solved the non-profit’s problems, if our business model was feasible, and the effectiveness of our marketing strategy. This was one of the longer ones (3 days) so I really appreciated the amount of breathing room in between. This is great for first timers because you won’t have as much burnout as shorter ones. Across the 3 days, I planned it something like this:

Friday night: Understand what we’re trying to solve, lay out a plan, form responsibilities to be done the next day, go home and sleep. On the note of sleeping, I never had to pull all-nighters (though some people do).

Saturday: Chart out userflows, sketch up solutions, have mini standup meetings about every 2 hours so we can be aligned with what other teammates (graphic design, marketing, etc.) are doing. We talk about current tasks, discuss any obstacles, and try to have some ice-breakers to goof off and have fun.

Sunday: Consolidate all our assets together, start building the presentation, and keep rehearsing. In the late afternoon we pitch, got judged, do some networking, and then go home.

Again, no coding skills needed. Most of the software we used were presentation, graphic, or planning related. For my group, we used Sketch, Slack, Google Docs, and Keynote.

Idea Hackathon Overview

With ideation hackathons, you rarely have to build anything functional. For this reason, they’re best for people of all skill ranges to participate because they’re such confidence-boosters. Some people created stuff using Amazon Alexa, but most people just made presentation slides with concepts of how to get people buying more paper products through Amazon.

For our group, we looked at subscription-based services like Graze, Dollar Shave Club, and Amazon’s Subscribe and Save and took the best elements of each. The best part about this one was the networking aspect. I got to meet people from two powerhouse companies that eventually helped me improve my portfolio and help me land career opportunities.