Spook: A Ghost Story

Don't let your hackathon be haunted by ghostly hackers: a data-driven solution to ensure your sign ups don't drop dead 💀

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

HackathonParty is plagued by ghostly hackers 👻 signing up to but subsequently dropping out of events.
This leads to loss of money and time spent organising venues, refreshments and merchandise.

We've crunched the data on dropout reasons over time for the WIT Hackathon:

People were nervous to meet new people, unsure of the environment and anxious they wouldn't know anyone.
It's a big time commitment: people wanted to ensure the value out matched their time taken out to attend.
We also noticed paranormal activity was noticeably higher the closer we got to the event

Next, we categorised the hackathon ghosts into the below segmentation:

👻 PARANORMAL PANICKERS: "is everyone going to be better than me? what will it be like? I won't know anyone?"
👻 SKEPTICAL SPECTRES: "Is it valuable? What do I get out of it? Is it worth my time?"
👻 THE 404s: these guys are a bit flaky anyway tbh. But we're not giving up on them.

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

Spook is a pre hack app to guide your enrolled hacker from cradle to grave: initial sign-up to after the event.

We plan to hand-hold all participants from sign-up to turn-up in a way that accounts for all these occult experiences. We believe it is important to:

Empower the Paranormal Panickers with knowledge and confidence before they've even walked through the door.
Inspire the Skeptical Spectres with purpose and motivation.
Debugging the 404s: we're going to land such a fantastic community right on their doorstep they'd be crazy to not turn up. It's 200s from here lads.
This includes team creation, code challenges and a gamefied points system for completing tasks.
- Team allocation and creation: this creates loyalty from your hackers towards their team. Studies show they're more likely to show up for their fellow comrades! They can chat and get to know each other in advance.
- Challenge Calendar: A calendar of pre hack challenges for teams to complete together, fostering relationships. Choose from 7, 14 or 21 days of challenges!
- Points System: Redeem points for repeat attendance/challenges completed on the day. What the points obtain is dictated by the Hackathon organiser.
- Information + Question/answer section: empower your hackers with knowledge, by answering their burning questions, which they submit via form on the app.
- Push notifications: Daily reminders to check your pre hack challenges!

🪦 API integration from your website to the Spook app: they sign in with Hackathon Party/Github credentials and our onboarding process on in the palm of their hand, in-app.
🪦 MVP delivered in html / css / js with python backend for countdown functionality
🪦 Design built in Figma, Spook logo in DALL-E

We were excited by all the opportunities and struggled a bit to narrow down our MVP and decided what we wanted to build, so we would do this differently in future and try to refine our MVP sooner

We made friends and all survived alive through our first ever Hackathon! 👻
Our team's communication was great and we kept everyone updated throughout the hack
We divided up tasks well according to our strengths

Ensure design is fully responsive, preventing ghoulish experiences on different screens
Collect richer user data from our hackathon clients, and use that data to drive even higher hacker retention, e.g. through more targeted challenges for the Countdown Calendar™️ and bespoke features.
Offer bespoke, tailored solutions depending on type of hack e.g Women in Tech, Neurodiversity in Tech.
Building authentication through OAuth and building a chat feature
Building out points system with rewards offered by sponsors, eg 100 points unlocks Codecademy discount
Notification system so users can get nudges to complete their challenge or motivational reminders to attend their event