2. As well as being an idea for an approach to hackathons this is:
A product to gather information from a group of users &
present the collected data to hackathon attendees

3. NYCHack For: Hackathon Organizers
Eating my own dog food:

4. Methods for gathering data:
Free Form Interview Email List of Questions
Give out form with paper
and pen
Structured list of interview
questions + notes
Tested with: Saha & Noelle Tested with: Ian Tested with: Noel Tested with: Noel & Jeremy
Pros:
-Natural & Conversational
-Interviewer needs
Pros:
-Structured
-Digital Data
-Flexible time demands
Pros:
-Structured
-Flexible time demands
-No technology needed for
user
Pros:
-Structured
-Can be flexible with follow
up / new questions if needed
Cons:
-Interviewer needs to be well
enough versed to ask the
right questions
-No Structure
Cons:
-Burden of need to be concise
-Can be put off indefinitely
-No interaction between
interviewer / interviewee
Cons:
-Burden of need to be
concise
-Analog data
-Can be put off indefinitely
Cons:
-Taking notes on the computer
is tricky and seems like you are
distracted
Result:
Good but labour intensive
and unstructured ;/
Result:
Still awaiting response :(
Result:
Refused by test subject!
Result:
Good but labour intensive ;/
Some hastily A->B tested methods done on site at NYC Big Apps

5. Resulted in:
Notes..
I think the end form for this data is most likely to be a series of notes that could be assigned to
a central list of questions.
Cases where I tried to get people to write answers in their own words failed & transcribed
conversations probably would have too much data.
Notes are good because they are in summary form, but bad because not in persons voice.
I kinda wanted to create a sense of the people being hacked for so there would be a
connection between hacker and personality of user.

6. Initial Conclusions:
Further exploration is probably warranted, but it could be hard to make an effective ‘self
service’ digital tool for gathering the data from people
Would need to be quite compelling interface, or people clearly incentivized to participate.
Still good if possible because can achieve more scale.
So maybe coming up with a good digital interface for gathering the info is the main product
challenge.
Interviews are going to gather more useful data but its going to be quite labour intensive and
dependent on a central organizer.

7. Other Observations:
Subject Matter Experts / Reps from Community Organisations
From talking to Noelle from the EDC, Noel for Big Apps, and Jeremy for Code for America it
became clear that information about people & their needs rarely comes directly from the
people to the planners / organisers.
Conclusions are typically presented by reps from organizations who work closely with the
groups in question, or subject matter experts.
Practically speaking it seems important for this product to allow room for input from experts /
reps as a way to summarise problems for user groups that have already been identified.
Archetypal Users
Jeremy mentioned the idea of ‘Archetypal Users’ - identifying people from the research group
(or fabricating them by generalizing some observed trends) who are a good representation of
the likely product user.
Highlighting users like this in detail as a way to summarize bulk research might be a good
practical way to present information.