March 2022
AthenaHacks Hackathon 2023 Winner: “Best Beginner Hack”
Rowze is a morning productivity accountability app where friends or family can compete through random tasks for a collectively decided prize... or punishment!
Team Representative | Design Lead (UX Design and Graphic Design)
Developers Kasia and Gayeon, UX designers Joanne and Rachel.
Create any given product within a 24-hour time span
We ultimately decided we wanted to use our time together to create a product that was enjoyable to use and where users could have fun. The most consensus-driven and unique problem we came up with was waking up in the morning - and staying up. How could we make this process more enjoyable for us?
We decided to gameify the morning routine and motivate users to wake up on time with the help of friendly competition within a chosen group. Our vision for Rowze was to create a stress-free environment where users could not only motivate themselves to begin their mornings with a productive start, but push and encourage their peers to do the same.
Rowze would be a time-based app where users, in accordance to their daily waking and sleeping goals, would be required to complete a simple task within 5 minutes of their alarm going off. Users could create groups and compete within them, setting stakes at the beginning of each week as a means of motivation.
We first brainstormed over the characteristics and features of the application. Would it also function as an alarm? How could we make the process fast and accessible to all users? We came up with a list of key words that we wanted to prioritize during development:
Next, at this point in time, we separated into two teams: design and development teams. The development teams went to a workshop to learn programming strategies for mobile app development, while the design teams got started immediately on user flow planning. At this stage, we mapped out the onboarding experience as well as the flow in which an average user would go about using the app.
After completely mapping out our application, we went straight into wireframing. We first researched other applications to better understand industry standards for community-driven apps. With apps such as BeReal, Instagram, and Facebook in consideration, we began working out a lo-fi wireframe. We focused on two major flows: the onboarding experience and the general user experience.
After initializing our wireframe, we decided on the core components of our design.
Finally, our last responsibility as the design team was to create a functioning prototype that would effectively showcase our vision for the app. Here is our final prototype! Feel free to scroll and press buttons as it is an interactive prototype!
Our next steps were to help the development team in making sure the design was implemented effectively. Of course, the developing team did not wait until we were done prototyping to start their work, there was too much to be done! While Joanne continued to work on our wireframe, I took a break from designing to plan how we would go about programming our vision into a concrete product with Kasia and Gayeon. Because neither had experience coding for mobile applications, we decided to code for web - but mold our product to fit a mobile browser.
On the second day, after submissions were due at 11am to Devpost, we prepared a short product demonstration to showcase our product in front of the event judges as well as a panel sponsored by Meta. We also received feedback on how to improve our team workflow at future events as well as commendation on our mascot (He’s an original design we like to call Dapper Duck).
After finishing presentations, we headed over to the awards ceremony where we won “Best Beginner Hack,” a category made for all the first-time hackers. We received specially commentary from the judges about the innovative nature of our idea and the cute theme behind it.
After the whole event went down, I was more proud of the lessons I learned rather than the prize I won. It was a long day - I was awake from 10am Saturday till 8AM Sunday (I haven’t pulled an all nighter since my freshman year). I learned the importance of everyone’s individual role in a team and how I could apply myself to boost everyone else’s productivity. It was also my first experience completing a project with only one other UX designer, rather than being the sole designer or in a larger team of four. Most importantly, I was able to walk myself through all the steps and trials of prouduct development. Although it was rushed, I believe that it really expanded my insight of the field and will be an invaluable resource to me in the future.
