Design + Hackathon = Designathon!
Awarded 1st place overall in UTD’s UX Club 2024 Designathon
The 2024 Designathon, hosted by UTD's UX club, was a 24-hour challenge where students were tasked to create a solution in accordance with two prompts. After the 24 hours had passed, groups had the opportunity to present to a panel of judges that consisted of sponsors from Intuit, CBRE, UX club officers, UTD Alumni, and various industry professionals. Sidekick was awarded with 1st place overall UXperience (plus some awesome Wacom drawing tablets).
Roles:
Lead Brand designer, UX Researcher, Prototype Designer, Graphic design
Software:
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate, Canva, GluMaps
Team Members:
Arianne Poblete, Grace Kang
Published:
October 2024
Are you up to the challenge?
"Design a digital application or product that helps individuals embrace the process of creation, encouraging exploration, iteration, and growth from imperfect beginnings"
- General UX Club Prompt
"Collaborative financial planning: Design an experience where students can create, share, and refine budget plans with input from peers and financial advisors."
- Intuit Prompt
Ideation + Brainstorming
We spent the first couple of hours conducting competitor research, brainstorming app names, user research, and searching for usable Expo markers. From our research, we were able to compile a list of features that we wanted to include in our app, which consisted of a forum for students to anonymously ask financial questions, a portal to speak to financial advisors, a feature for a peer-to-peer review of budgeting plans, and a custom expense tracker. After this, we were finally ready to face the long night ahead of us.
Logos + Branding
The logo and branding were extremely important to the identity of Sidekick because we wanted to create an app that was friendly and not intimidating for the user. We landed on the name "sidekick" because of the positive connotation of someone helping you through your financial journey. The colors we chose were also to emphasize the welcoming personality of the brand.
After a sleepless night & numerous Disney playlists...
The Final App Prototype
After a refreshing 3 hours of sleep, Sidekick was finally finished! Our app features a dashboard overview of expenses, a customizable budget plan, peer-to-peer reviews of budgets, a personal financial advisor tab, financial advisor reviews, a general FAQ page, a forums page, chats & messages, and a profile page. Feel free to watch the full walkthrough of our app prototype!
Let’s celebrate!!
Following a full night of designing and prototyping, we were ready to present to the judges. In anxious anticipation, we found out we were awarded 1st overall UXperience! Regardless of our placement, I'm incredibly proud of the work we accomplished in such a short time. A huge thank you to my amazing teammates Arianne and Grace, because this would never be possible without each of them. A huge thank you to the UX Club as well for hosting this event. Time to celebrate with some ice cream!
If you are interested in learning more about Sidekick, please feel free to check out the full presentation down below!
