my first hackathon experience
This past weekend, at the last minute, I joined a hackathon team as a software developer. I had been in game jams before as an artist and as an art lead — but this was my first time working in a jamathon as an engineer, and also my first time working with a UX designer.
Working with the designer really sped up the experience —I was able to code with far less backtracking than if I had to build the app without one — because of the speed with which she was able to visually design the interface. Without her, I would have had to produce a basically-functioning skeleton each time I had a question for our team leader about the design or user experience, all the while the whole of my design would be possibly subject to design until I hit the final. As a result, we were able to build and deploy a visually-polished, mobile-responsive React app in lightning speed — just inside of two and a half days. In the near future, I will take it on myself to learn how to use Figma, at least on a basic level, so that I can quickly layout mockups for supervisors in the event that I’m not so fortunate as to be working with a UX designer.
Also given the space to just focus on the code, I was able to give my attention to focusing on maintaining a more highly organized system of components and modular code, and advance my understanding of SCSS (friendship ended with repeated mix-ins — now partials are my best friend).
It was also cool to be working on a project along with data scientists who had been working with the CDC! My life experience has been such that I’d never before worked with experts like this, and I’m grateful to have been able to meet them.
Our project, submitted to a couple different hackathons, can be found at co-caring-dashboard.netlify.com. It’s a dashboard meant to provide data to support local and community actions like shelter-in-place (and other non-pharmaceutical interventions), and spread Vytality Health’s #Co-Caring movement, which seeks to spur individuals to reach out and take care of their neighbors as the pandemic around us continues.
