My Experience at Virtual NYU Hack 2022

On a fine evening of 14 February 2022, it suddenly hit me to open https://mlh.io/, long story short, I registered for NYU Hack and attended it for 2 days from 26 to 27 February (in IST). So, I’m sharing my experience attending Virtual NYU Hack 2022.

You can know more about the hackathon at https://hacknyu.org/.

The event was scheduled according to the EST time zone and being an Indian, my task was to convert those timings into the IST time zone, and manage accordingly.

➡️Day 1: 26th February 2022.

One the previous day, I slept at like 11 pm to wake up at 3 am. After continuously snoozing my alarm for half an hour, I finally woke up at 3:30 am with burning red eyes.

Later having a strong cup of coffee, I was finally ready to see what was in the queue for me.

I had joined the Discord Server, the previous night. So, I opened the Discord app and attended the Opening Ceremony. Then, the actual challenge of figuring out the team. After taking the interview of 2 and giving an interview to 1, I came across Jeffrey, he already had 2 members in the team before me. I was the last one to join the team.

Pumping my shy personality, and getting into the “Extrovert zone”.

After some random chit-chat on the voice channel, we started to brainstorm about the project and tools, figuring out whether to use Django, Flask, Kivy, Webflow, or just design it on Figma and present the prototype at the end. In this process, we explored a lot about all these python frameworks and Github but settled with designing using Figma and developing it using a no-code tool, named Webflow.

Also, we thought of storing our conclusions and the project strategy in a project-management tool called Notion. After teaching them the basics of the Notion, we started to randomly put our thoughts and conclusions onto the Notion Page. Around this time, I had a clear understanding of the people and the team, but, some thought had to be given in strategizing the project. But, very soon, we decided to call it off at 7 am, and as soon as the call was done, I was there in my blanket, ready to sleep in the next 30 seconds.

Good night!

Day 1 finished. Ready to sleep now!

➡️ Day 2: 27th February 2022.

In reality, Day 2 for me started at 8:30 pm on 26th February because of all that time zone situation. Many workshops were planned. After a quick coffee, I began taking the session, and actually, most of them were fun and insightful. Like, in one session by Mr. Sola Babatunde, I learned Framer, which is a UX Prototyping tool.

Design Thinking and Inclusive Leadership session by Dr. Lisa Coleman and Monroe France

While the sessions were still going on, we mutually agreed to skip some which weren’t part of our forte and worked on the project. Then, we made a project vision board on Notion and looked at how could we integrate APIs or add JavaScript code in Webflow. After spending around 3–4 hours, we figured out that it was part of a paid plan.🤦‍♂ ️

So, we skipped the development part, and decided to only design it using Figma, and submit the Figma prototype at the very end.

Fun fact: Figma was one of the sponsors of the hackathon.

After switching between Figma, Zoom, Discord, and Notion the whole night, I didn’t realize it was morning already. All the sessions were over, and we all went off the call for some time.

The real test day, also known as Day 2!

The whole day went by designing in Figma, and in the evening meeting, my team decided to add a new feature. My sleep-deprived exhausted mind wanted to scream but still managed to complete the job 2 hours before the final deadline.

Each team also had to create a short demo video, explaining their projects. Just after 5 times, I and Dominic were able to successfully record the video, and submit our project, an hour before the deadline.

Finally! It was done!

If you wish to look at the project, click here.

Hack NYU Project — CarbonCut

Fun fact: My team didn’t win, but I learned a lot.

✨ Learnings and Realizations from My First SERIOUS Hackathon

1. My laptop’s fan makes awesome noise.😌
2. It helped to get out of my comfort zone. Even though I slept for only 4-hours in 2-days, the skills I learned and the relations I built are far more precious.
3. As a designer, getting exposure to empathizing with others who were coming from a completely diverse background than mine, helped me grow in the Design Thinking Process.
4. People had completely different perspectives, ways of learning. The way I understood the situation was completely different from my teammate’s, but I had to make sure that both of us were on the same page. This helped in staying curious about everything and investing in the project as a whole. During this process of learning, teaching, or we can say, collaboration, my foundation of some concepts became very strong.
5. This was a 48-hours long hackathon, out of which most of my time was invested in the sessions. Still managing to complete the hack taught me to work under stress and manage my time efficiently and effectively.
6. Documentation is really important, be it, designs, learnings, or memories. I had attended 2 hacks before this, but this time I decided to document the whole journey from start to finish. It only took me 5-minutes per day to save the pointers in Notion, but it benefited. The result is in front of you, My First Medium Article.

After all of this, it was an amazing experience, I would highly encourage you to attend some hackathons. You’ll gain insane value from the OGs of your industry. Try it out, you’ll thank yourself. Thanks again, NYU for this amazing hack.

If you read the whole article, Thank you so much for your time. It means a lot to me.

I’m open to further discussions, receiving feedback, and connecting. Feel free to message me on LinkedIn.