Rule #1: Have Simple Goals

We first made sure that we have clearly defined goals for the hack week. We needed to make the goal simple but powerful. Here’s what we came up with:

Create a mobile-first, simple form builder from scratch.

When we decided on this goal, everyone knew it was about being “mobile-first.” So, all of our creative energies were focused on how to make the greatest mobile-first form builder.

Rule #2: Think

We decided on the goal a few weeks before the start of hack week. This gave each team time to think about the problem thoroughly. So, when the time came, they were ready to tackle the problems head on.

Rule #3: Push Through

Since we only had five days, we didn’t spend too much time on preparations. We started building things right away.

On the first day, we dived into the cold water head first. It was time to get serious and create a simple Form Builder. We laid the foundation for our challenge by researching UX and programming environments, then five separate teams built five form builders in parallel.

At first, having such limited time seemed to be a big challenge, as we had a hard time simultaneously planning and working together without blocking or going against each other. Our one question for the week was: How can we pull off ideation and execution of this within a week?

Rule #4: Create and Iterate

Nothing brings out awesome new ideas better than a competition under a tight deadline. So, instead of trying to apply all of the ideas that we liked, we tried to come up with a priority order of our ideas. Usually, we all have hard time making decisions when there many opposing good ideas. Having less time made our team’s job much more easier. We did not have time to waste time finding the perfect idea. We executed with what we had.

In the following days, everyone on the team got to a certain level of work tempo and motivation for creating and trying new things. And we also got used to the new layout and the new programming environment quickly.