Daniel Aitanun’s Post

Amidst the energy of the Insurjo'24 hackathon by The Product Folks, I found myself knee-deep in the challenge of designing personalized onboarding experiences for CollEdge's crowd. No easy feat, mind you! But hey, I dove into the world of user experience design headfirst. Cooking up some user-friendly & secure signup, login, and registration processes for students, college admins, and financial lender folks was quite the ride. I gotta say, it was a real eye-opener, teaching me a ton about putting users first. Now, I'm stoked to show off what I came up with—a little something I whipped up during my hackathon adventure. #Hackathon #UXDesign #UserExperience #TechFest #CodingMarathon #productdiscovery #HigherEducation #EdTech #Innovation #DigitalLearning #ProductDesign #TechInnovation #StartupLife #TechCommunity #SoftwareDevelopment #insurjowithtpf #productmanagement #productmanager #product #productinnovation #productgrowth #productgrowth

How do we select our #hackathon ideas? Gravitywell keeps an Ideanote board full of pain points, problem spaces and the tiny sparks of potential solutions. But we can only take one of them with us to our annual hackathon. So how do we pick? Well, we pick a quiet afternoon, relocate to somewhere with pizza & beer (thanks, Left Handed Giant 🍻), and go through everything as a team. Here’s how: 🏁 Pick success criteria. It may be a fantastic idea, but that doesn’t mean it ticks all the right boxes for a hackathon. For us, that’s commercial viability, exciting to the whole team, be something we could start and finish in a week, and keep a whole team of designers, developers, strategists and marketeers occupied for the whole hackathon. 👩⚖️ Judge everything fairly - give everybody the same amount of time to pitch their problem space / idea. Maybe you can already spot that the idea clearly fails the success criteria, but don’t discount the duds. Respect the creative process- 5 minutes of the team’s time is a small price to pay for hearing everybody out and creating an environment where everybody feels safe to contribute. ⏰ Having said that- speed is key. We gave ourselves 3 hours to go through 10 ideas and it was barely enough time. Choose somebody to be the enforcer- somebody who can reign in spiralling conversations when the time is right and move the team onto the next idea. 🙋 Question everything! Good or bad, each idea must be interrogated. We’re not at the qualification stage yet but it helps to have a fair amount of skepticism- it doesn’t help anybody to “yes, and” ourselves all the way to a bad product. 🗳️ Once every idea has been heard, it’s time to vote. We got everybody to pick their first and second favourite ideas. This is a good time to remind everyone - if it’s not picked for the hackathon, it doesn’t mean it’s fully discounted! We’ll add it to our R&D mission backlog to pick up another day. And that’s it- votes are in! Now we move onto the qualification stage- more on that later. #ideation #innovation #bristol #venturestudio

📣 Please join me for a 🆓 30-minute workshop about finding your ideal customer and unique value prop faster. While most early-stage startups are customer-obsessed, their approach to customer discovery is often inefficient and scattershot. I’ll share our cheat code for streamlining that process and boosting startups’ velocity. This is for founders, PMs, designers, and researchers who want to learn how to: • Accelerate your customer and product discovery. • Identify the specific customer segment to target first. • Make customer research a team sport. Join LIVE on July 24! RSVP here (it’s free): https://bit.ly/3RWfAh1 What challenges or questions about customer research do you want to learn about? Comment below!

𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧𝗗𝗢𝗪𝗡 𝗕𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗦 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝟳𝟮 𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗦 𝗔𝗧 𝗦𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗧-𝟮𝗫! What is Sprint-2X? it's a 72-hour innovation marathon with 80 product visionaries, targeting 4200 hours of groundbreaking product development — equivalent to 6 months of dev effort in a normal scenario. Date: Today (16th)-18th May 2024 These 72 hours will be an intense journey of striving for something extraordinary in coming 3 days. Building out entire product innovation roadmap for Unberry across 5 different tracks. There are many folks who are deeply invested in Unberry’s journey - we are planning bunch of initiatives to keep each one of you looped in! 𝑮𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒖𝒔 𝒂 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 if you’ve ever dreamt of building cool, ground-breaking stuff - 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖’𝒅 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒕-2𝑿 progress and updates. We’d shortly share more details with you. 🖤 Let's get going 💪💪💪 #Sprint2X #Unberry #Grappus #Innovation #Hackathon

🌟 Day 1 of the Hackathon: An Exciting Start! 🌟 What an incredible first day at [Hackathon Name]! 🎉 I’m thrilled to be a part of this amazing event, surrounded by passionate innovators and creators. Here are my highlights from Day 1: 🚀 Team Formation: Proud to be part of Team JARGONS! Together, we’re working on an exciting challenge—Problem Statement ID 1637: Mobile App for Direct Market Access for Farmers under the theme Agriculture, FoodTech, and Rural Development. I’m excited to collaborate with my team as we bring our ideas to life over the next few days! 💡 Brainstorming: We had an intense brainstorming session, narrowing down our focus to solve the problem of creating an accessible platform for farmers. It's inspiring to see the creativity and dedication from everyone on the team. 👨💻 Coding Sprint: Jumped right into coding and problem-solving. So far, we’re making great progress, and I can’t wait to see where this journey takes us. 👥 Networking: It’s been awesome to connect with fellow participants and mentors from various industries. The shared passion for innovation is contagious! Looking forward to Day 2, where we’ll be diving deeper into our project and pushing ourselves to create something impactful. Stay tuned for more updates! 🚀 #Hackathon #Agriculture #FoodTech #RuralDevelopment #Innovation #Teamwork #TechCommunity #FirstDayExcitement #Coding #Learning

Passion made so many of us newbies jump unto the #30dayschallenge but what will sustain us for the rest of the challenge isn't passion anymore BUT Determination and The Right Mindset.. Day 3 Entry of Techy Jaunt #30daychallenge under the mentorship of Marvellous itai #uiux #uiuxdesign #uiuxtips #uxdesign #webdesign #appdesign

🌟🚀 Thrilled to share my experience at Wittyhacks 4.0! I successfully completed the 36-hour hackathon and received a participation certificate. 🎉💻 It was an intense, exhilarating journey that pushed my limits and expanded my horizons in ways I never imagined. First and foremost, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to the incredible organizers at Wittyhacks - Akshay Mandliya sir and his entire team. 🙏 Your meticulous #planning, seamless execution, and unwavering support made this event a remarkable #success. The energy and #enthusiasm you brought to the table were truly inspiring. A special shoutout to my amazing mentors - Anmoldeep Singh A. sir and Vinayak Rawat sir, who provided invaluable guidance throughout the hackathon. 🧠💡 Your #expertise, #patience, and #encouragement were instrumental in helping me navigate through challenges and bring my ideas to life. Your feedback and insights were crucial in refining my project, and I am deeply grateful for your support. Participating in WittyHacks 4.0 was not just about coding, it was about #collaboration, #innovation, and #pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve together. 🤝✨ Working alongside such talented and driven individuals was an #honor, and the camaraderie we built during those 36 hours was truly special. This hackathon was a significant learning experience for me. From #brainstorming ideas to debugging code in the early hours of the morning, every moment was a learning opportunity. 📚🛠️ The skills and knowledge I gained will undoubtedly contribute to my future endeavors in tech and beyond. Thank you once again to the organizers and mentors at Wittyhacks for making this an unforgettable experience. 🌈 Here’s to many more hackathons and opportunities to learn, grow, and innovate together! 🌐💪 #WittyHacks #Hackathon #TechInnovation #Teamwork #Gratitude #LearningJourney #CodingLife #FutureReady #ThankYou #TechCommunity #Mentorship #SkillsDevelopment #Innovation #TechCareer #CareerGrowth #TechEvent #ProfessionalGrowth #Collaboration #CreativeThinking #DigitalTransformation #SoftwareDevelopment #TechSkills #ContinuousLearning #HackathonExperience #NetworkingOpportunities #TechLeaders #ChallengeAccepted

Thanks for the shoutout, Abhishek Nikam 🙌 Looking to practice your backend developer skills? roadmap.sh's got you 🤜🤛 Check out our free projects now 👉 https://roadmap.sh/backend #Roadmap #BackEnd #Developer #Programming

We probably tell all our MVP-building founders this. 👇 Don’t go for too much too soon. Asking your users, ‘Would you like this feature?’ will usually result in a ‘Yes, please’, but once you’ve built it, these features often don’t get used. Focus on the big wins that attract a core user base. Once you’ve established this core base, you can start looking at expanding the options and features to win over the customers who need a little something extra to come on board. #TSFTech #StartupAdvice #ProductDevelopment #LeanStartup

Do you eat your own dog food? 🥫 Some thoughts on product... With two weeks to go before Fuzzy Labs holds its first #llm hackathon I'd like to share some lessons and reflections on our product journey so far. 🐕 Eat your own dog food* This is crucial. As developers, we know our code inside and out, so it's easy to forget that a customer experiences things differently. You have to continuously place yourself into the customer's shoes, e.g.... - Forget what you already know, and follow the documentation to the letter: does it make sense? Do all the steps work correctly? - Start with a clean environment, and run everything from scratch: did we forget a critical dependency? - Do something wrong on purpose: does it fail gracefully? To build a good product, you need to use it yourself, and behave just like a customer. But as we've learnt, that's not always easy in practice. We constantly have to fight the temptation to work from memory instead of using the documentation, to work around a bug instead of fixing it, and to take a shortcut to save time. *I have no idea where this saying comes from, but at least it's memorable. 🛣️ Focus on the critical path With so many competing priorities, it can be difficult to know where to focus. Having a deadline - in our case the hackathon - acts as a forcing function. But it's not always easy, as we all want to work on the shiny things, which don't always align with the critical path. ⚖️ Validate the thinking Demos and user testing are all essential to product development. You can have the best tech in the world, but does it solve the right problem? You'll never know until you ask somebody else. External feedback can be daunting but without it you're just guessing what the market wants. You have to be ready to iterate, experiment, and change your thinking when necessary. In two weeks, we're opening up our tooling to the world. We've got an amazing cohort joining us at the hackathon, and I very much look forward to welcoming you all on the day!