DesignBuddies | Innovate 48 Hackathon
How I led a global team to hackathon victory in 48 hours, with zero industry experience.
Innovate 48 Hackathon
Recruit a team
Peer to peer collaboration tool
Establish a networking hub
Improve user engagement rate
In a global 48-hour hackathon, I led a team of eight designers to create a new collaborative feature for an educational platform struggling with low engagement. Our challenge was to design a peer-support and networking tool that increased connection, reduced learner isolation, and aligned with business goals. All under extreme time pressure.
Responsibilities
Hackathon recruitment post in CareerFoundry Slack student channel
I was responsible for recruitment, strategy, information architecture, and creating a framework that allowed eight strangers across time zones to collaborate effectively. I established the sprint structure, facilitated alignment, clarified user needs, and guided the team through critical decision-making, especially when pressure and fatigue began to impact cohesion.
Stepping Into Leadership
I recruited team members from my CareerFoundry cohort and the hackathon platform (which was chaos!). Once all 8 team members were secured, I scheduled an ice-breaker meeting. The team asked me to take the lead position as they thought I had done a great job of recruiting and co-ordinating the team. I felt happy, nervous and excited all at once!
The team had a range of skills
Interaction
The team had a range of skills and personalities which created a strong foundation. As an X-shape designer, I was well placed to oversee strategy and information architecture, ensuring all these talents came together in an impactful way.
I planned deliverables to match requirements
The design was judged in 4 key areas as seen above.
I documented a clear sprint plan and shared judging criteria, prompts, and objectives in Slack to maintain momentum and alignment. I mapped our deliverables to each criterion so every artefact directly supported the problem space, user insights, and the story we presented to the judges.
Process
Users expressed a need for networking and peer support
Survey data revealed a clear problem. Learners felt isolated. They needed spaces for peer support, networking, and collaborative problem-solving. I delegated research tasks and called the team together for meeting afterwards where we synthesised insights and moved forward quickly without compromising clarity.
Problem Statement
Learners need a way to collaborate because feeling isolated prevents them from reaching their goal.
We will know this to be true when the engagement rate increases by x%
Visualising the new collaborative feature and forum
We broke apart for some creative time alone and arranged a meeting to share our ideas afterwards. The aim was to return with a user flow including low-fidelity wireframes visualising the new collaborative feature and forum, leaning on universal design patterns from Slack and Figma as they were tested, successful designs.
The intensity started to cause cracks
The team had skipped user flows and jumped straight into mid-fidelity wire-framing with no clear pathway for the user. I sat back and reflected why. Clear objectives were previously agreed and no concerns where raised, so what happened? I recognised the root causes, pressure, skill gaps and unclear architectural direction.
Bringing Structure & Clarity
I brought the team back to basics with a simple, outcome-driven user flow that linked the problem to clear action. It instantly aligned everyone. I talked the team through my thinking with annotations and reflective questions, helping them understand the “why” behind decisions so we could collaborate more effectively.
Learners need a way to collaborate because feeling isolated prevents them from reaching their goal.
As a learner, I want collaborative tools so that, I can receive peer support and accelerate my progress
Sarah is an existing user, she is struggling with a task in her course, so she decides to reach out to an online friend in the live chat, to ask if they could demonstrate what to do on the white board.
Slack message I sent to my team when I had to step back.
The team had achieved so much in just 24 hours. It was time to take the design to the next level and we had a mentor meeting scheduled for the next day. Then, during the night my son became ill, my heart sank and I had to step down. The true test of leadership was whether the systems I built could sustain the team.
Supporting the team remotely
Figma feedback left for the team
Outcome
ShareSpace
Make friends, connect and collaborate
Though the final wireframes weren’t fully polished, the result offered learners a full ecosystem of support. Sharespace wasn't just built for learning, it was built for lasting connection. The design transformed individual learning into a shared, community-driven experience. More importantly, the team delivered a coherent, user-centred solution under pressure, demonstrating resilience, clarity, and strong collaboration.
Retro
What I learned about designing for people, not pixels.
Structure creates freedom
Building a clear process early on gave the team confidence to move fast later. Good design leadership is almost invisible, it’s the framework that lets creativity thrive.
Leadership is letting go
True leadership isn’t about control, it’s about enabling others to succeed without you. Setting up systems that worked in my absence became my proudest design outcome.
Empathy wins
Designing with empathy didn’t just shape our product, it shaped our team. Understanding each other’s limits and strengths made collaboration feel human, not transactional.
