It all started with a clue...
Each year the Global Service Jam announces its annual secret theme online just before the start of the event.
The theme of 2016 was simply the sound of an object being dropped into water (see at 9:53 of the video).
Creating a direction...
After a brief ideation phase the team formulated an interaction vision to describe how the user should experience the service.
Fast-paced Ideation
While the team members were revisiting the set context, everybody was thinking out loudly, while ideas were collected paper notes.
Who is this for?
Our considerations were mapped into a collection of ideas which helped increase the decision making process concerning the target group and who the most interesting benefits of our service could be for.
Analytical Exploration
We increased our creative output during the ideation phase by quickly focussing on the contributing components and reviewed their potential with the help of a simple equation.
Defining the concept:
Throughout the process of converging various ideas, the concept was agreed to focus on the following aspects.
Presenting our refreshing vision
To mark the half-time of the hackathon, all teams prepared brief presentation of their current progress. This gave a nice opportunity to see what and how the others were working on their ideas and providing one another with valuable tips while receiving feedback.
Validating our assumptions and learning more, quickly.
In order to find out if we are on the right way as well as learn some more about people's experiences, we went outside and and had some great conversations with people on in the streets.
We returned to our desks with a lot of valuable insights
Now that our concept direction had been narrowed down to a clear goal, the search began for finding the best method to realize and test our concept.
Time to start prototyping
A few members of the team focussed on making paper prototypes of our interface while thinking about how to arrange the best interaction flows for the users.
Quick & dirty user testing
After having developed a rough interface, the concept was also validated concerning its user experience which is mainly based on shared content.
For this, personal messages were recorded on people's phones and set as their alarm without them knowing what to expect.
The next morning the participants reports showed that our concept actually did put smiles on people's faces and was therefore considered a success.
Creating the concept story
To show our intentions, ideas and solution easily we made an simple photo story of a user scenario with materials we had at hand at our workspace location.
Wrapping it all up and getting ready for the show
Towards the end of the hackathon all remaining tasks had to happen simultaneously and required the team to perform well under stress. While some concentrated on creating of the prototype interface, others worked on the concept's business model outline while the remaining members arranged the presentation slides and the project's video you can find below.