Zubash Akmal, an Interaction Design student in the Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design, helped coordinate a successful Hackathon hosted by NUVO Network in Burlington on October 5th & 6th in support of the United Way of Halton & Hamilton.
First place went to a team of Sheridan students from the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology (FAST) Mobile Computing Degree Program – Samina Khaliq and Bilha Ghedeon, and from the Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design (FAAD) Interaction Design Degree Program – Galaxia Wu and Andreja Morrison.
The event’s purpose was to identify opportunities, gaps and solutions for reaching the community and delivering local services. The two-day event brought together emerging business leaders, software developers, designers, and philanthropists in an intense collaboration.
As per Hackathon regulations, all teams were formed on the spot, given 24 hours, and challenged to create an innovative way to increase youth involvement in their communities through volunteering and other initiatives.
Results were judged on:
- Creativity – the “wow” factor of the solution
- Usability – usefulness to solve a problem
- Technicality – the technology used to create the solution
- Scalability – potential for future enhancements
- Mission/business value – solving a problem that aligns with the mission
Bilha Ghedeon speaks about their experience at the Hackathon:
We decided to try and make use of the Google Assistant through Google Actions for an easier way to sign up for and get more information on volunteering events in the user’s area.
Our teammates Andreja and Galaxia created a prototype for a companion application where the user could also look and sign up for events as well as see events people in their network are attending and reach out to event coordinators.
The application keeps track of volunteer hours and upcoming events. Our goal was to learn while using something we haven’t seen before and create a product that took out the confusion of signing up for events online through an easy to use and accessible application.
We are proud of our Sheridan students for their innovation, collaboration and creativity!
