Hackathon Insights: Design Over Implementation
Yesterday I joined a small hackathon and really enjoyed the whole experience. It was organized by a company - they had a hackathon event where I was randomly grouped with 5 people I’d never met before as a team, competing against 6 or 7 other teams.
The challenge was to build something to visualize data from a complex JSON file they gave us - basically a financial report visualization.
What surprised me most was how everyone was using AI. In my uni group, I’m usually the only one using AI aggressively and no one else does. I assumed the hackathon would be the same - that I’d be the only one using AI heavily. But surprisingly, everyone was using AI tools. I guess it makes sense though - people who join hackathons are typically fast learners who are flexible enough to try new things. Even the younger students already knew about the latest tech in software development.
This made me think: if everyone is using AI, what makes you stand out?
After deep thinking, I realized it’s design. Not UI design or physical design, but logical design - product design.
Our team won the hackathon, and I’m proud of our out-of-the-box thinking. Before building anything, we asked the organizers: “Who is your target customer?” They said accountants and local farmers.
Based on that insight, we designed our product with two modes:
Expert Mode (for accountants): Lists tiny details for every single number, charts, trending data - everything in detail, with an option to export as Excel files. This is exactly what accountants are looking for.
Easy Mode (for farmers): I thought about this from a farmer’s perspective - after a busy day of work, do they really care about fancy graphs or tiny details? Probably just profit and loss, maybe with a calendar showing profit/loss information. Nothing more. So we used lots of color but simple design, hiding unnecessary information and only showing what farmers actually care about.
The result was great - we won the prize. This gave me a lot of confidence because we were thinking in the correct way. Other teams either focused on making their dashboards beautiful or showing off their technical skills, but no one cared about thinking like a customer.
When you make a product, the function should serve the people. We need to build features based on true customer requirements, rather than building a Swiss knife approach. Maybe our product wasn’t the most technically powerful, but it was definitely the most user-friendly. People would use our product because it’s easy and comfortable to use. They can focus on what they care about and have time for more important things in their life.
We weren’t just designing a project - we were selling a lifestyle.
This is what I learned during the hackathon: in the AI era, how to implement is not important anymore. What’s important is the why - the design, the requirements, the user understanding. Implementation is becoming commoditized, but thoughtful design and deep user empathy remain irreplaceable.