Building Systems to Facilitate Student Owned Business Operations and Event Scheduling
Ashesi D:Lab’s fall semester Hackathon 2022, was a two-day event, packed with creativity and innovation. The event, which was focused on the theme, Building Systems to Facilitate Student Owned Business Operations and Event Scheduling, turned out to be a great success. Participants were given two tasks to choose from; either create a system that effectively and conveniently links Ashesi student business owners to the general Ashesi community and their primary target customers, or create a scheduling system that helps resolve the problem of event conflicts on campus.
The main event
The event commenced at 8pm with a speech from the Hackathon planning team, providing detailed information to the participants pertaining to the challenge ahead of them.
Students deciding on the challenge they want to solve
Dr. Gordon Adomdza, the faculty lead of the Ashesi D:Lab, also gave a speech touching on the aim of the D:Lab and its quest to promote creativity and innovation. He went on to cite an example of a student-led project known as the Helicopter project. The student in charge of this project set out to build a helicopter from scratch. Although it may have been seen as unfeasible, it was supported by the D:lab due to the drive and perseverance of the student involved. Dr. Adomdza encouraged students to be innovative in the pursuit of their projects as these efforts enhance campus life. Also, project team members were encouraged to incorporate the Sustainable Development Goals in their projects while practicing various knowledge areas like business development, computer science, and many more. In the same vein, this Hackathon was aligned with SDG 9 (enhancing industry, innovation and infrastructure by 2030), and African Union’s Agenda 2063 (specifically, goal 2 - educating students with improved skills that are underpinned by science, technology and innovation).
The Hackathon hosted about 55 participants, 10 teams, each comprising various majors that worked assiduously for 19 hours to find workable and innovative solutions to these challenges. The teams included Hack-Zero, Schuna, Team Vimmies, FAM, E2C, Novus, WuTang Clan, Binary Bosses, Hash Bits, and KBG. In the midst of the intense brainstorming and hardwork, there were intermittent breaks where participants took part in icebreakers and other fun challenges to promote networking and collaboration. A rich assortment of food was also available to the participants so they could refuel while their brains were hard at work.
A group brainstorming on the challenge to find an innovative solution
The Hackathon was divided into two primary phases: the problem space mapping section and the solution building section. In the problem space mapping phase, participants were required to map out their problems and identify all the relevant stakeholders (users) and other factors to help them deeply understand the challenges from the users’ perspectives. After completing this phase, participants spent time going through the ideation stage and progressed to prototyping their solution ideas - bringing the solutions that they had developed to life. Following the design thinking framework, the teams had to test their solutions with some of the identified users and modify their solution designs based on the feedback they got. Finally, the teams, after working throughout the night, compiled and submitted comprehensive updates at the end of each phase.
With storytelling as a key part of the design and innovation process, the teams culminated their work with presentations. They needed to convince a 6 member panel of judges and the general audience that they clearly understood the challenge, how it affects identified users, and developed and tested a suitable solution.
Presentation on the solutions
Winners and prizes
After the presentations, the judges selected the teams that had interesting yet feasible solutions. The overall winner, team FAM, was awarded a team travel experience with Mooove Africa in addition to a cash prize of GHC1,200. The first runner-up, team Novus, received a GHC800 cash prize and a travel experience with Mooove Africa. The second runner up, team E2C was also awarded GHC400. Additionally, all winning teams were awarded paid Udemy courses to explore their interest areas, in addition to implementing their solutions with guidance from the D:Lab. All participants received certificates and souvenirs from the Ashesi D:Lab. More importantly, they are going to be added to a pool of students who would help implement some of the innovation projects in the D:Lab.
The Hackathon is one of the many ways the D:Lab engages students, and the broader Ashesi community to work on innovative projects that meet actual needs in everyday life. Besides providing a platform for reinforcing learning and mastering skills in diverse knowledge areas, the D:Lab ultimately adds to efforts to locally produce solutions that have the potential to address pertinent social-economic issues without importing them. The D:Lab empowers these students to believe that they can leverage on what they have studied, the network of lecturers, staff, and other students, to contribute to the national agenda to promote domestication - innovation for domestication.
Pictures from the trips of the winning teams