Project Overview
I attended my first hackathon at the two-day October 2020 Technica Hackathon and joined a group of three other students to create a project that benefits the social good and fosters connections within the community.
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We created skills4thought, a free online skills exchange platform that will bring together communities of individuals to share their skills in exchange for learning a new skill. This would not only provide opportunities for unemployed individuals to upskill and build their resume in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it would also give many people a chance to begin learning skills that they may usually not be able to learn. The community aspect may help these individuals hold each other accountable for their learning progress and enhance social skills that are important in our rapidly developing society.
My Role
My role in this project was conducting research to define the problem, brainstorming solutions, and collaborating with teammates to develop a wireframe and mockup of our prototype. I also presented our final prototype to a panel of judges at the hackathon.
Tools
Devpost • Figma • Google Jamboard • Screencast-o-Matic
Audience
Our main audience is unemployed women whose careers were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Current Problem
Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, women have faced negative impacts within their careers (The Guardian and New York Times). According to studies from Qualtrics and theBoardlist, only 29% of women said that the pandemic has positively impacted their career, whereas 57% of men said that the pandemic has positively impacted their career. Additionally, 67% of men said that they have been more productive since working from home during the pandemic while 41% of women said the same.
Theory of Action
Our team began with two questions that we wanted to solve:
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How might we bring women together and foster the sense of community while providing a safe space to strengthen skills and knowledge?​
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How might we acknowledge that every individual has their own unique skillset that can impact others?
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Our theory of action is as follows:
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If we create an accessible educational community in which women can learn new skills, then women will be more supported in their careers and be able to expand their opportunities and skills. This will work because support from the community and seeing other individuals, and role models, who represent one's gender has been shown to help women overcome gender barriers that influence their careers (Lockwood, 2016).
Design Process
1 - Conduct research and define problem
With only one and a half days to complete our design process and hack, we first defined a current problem (the negative impact that the pandemic has on women) and conducted research on how we can solve the problem. Then, we generated our theory of action and began to brainstorm our prototype.
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​2 - Brainstorm
While brainstorming, we were inspired by Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society" and his idea of free "universal skill-sharing" (Illich, 1971, 90-91). Since we wanted to create an accessible educational community in which women can learn new skills, we wanted to bring Illich's idea of "universal skill-sharing" to reality by building an online platform for skill exchanging.
The image below shows more of our brainstorming ideas for the "skill currency" which would act as a motivator for learners and educators to continue participating in the skill-sharing. Our idea of gaining more currency with positive feedback after each lesson could help ensure that the learners and educators remain trustworthy in their learning and teaching.
3 - Wireframe and Mockup on Figma
The images below show our wireframe and mockup prototypes.
