Period Poverty has been officially identified as a problem in Bristol City. Bristol City Council was launching the campaign to bring change and support to people in need. The Period Dignity web app was developed as a community initiative in collaboration with Bristol City Council and several partner organisations.
Marius Jennings from Bristol City Council's Innovation team, John Kellas and I outlined the weekend. The goal was to prototype a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) which will let those who can't afford to buy sanitary products know where to pick them up, and those who want to/are able to donate know where they can drop products off.
We were hoping to have a basic app running by 4pm on the Sunday. 18 people signed up for the challenge all from a very diverse background. Game on!
Schedule in-person event including location, catering and advertising. Establish 4 task-focused pods (UX/UI, Frontend, Backend, Data Science) with expert professionals as focalisers. Create a preliminary tech stack, task lists and Kanban Boards. Facilitate a compact discovery process for all pods. Create Figma prototype and style guide.
As a focaliser of the UX/UI pod I outlined a worksheet with tasks and goals for the weekend. The whole hackathon seemed suddenly a big ask from each of the teams. Not only did we have to explore problem space and develop solutions in a tight time frame, we also had to merge it all into a workable prototype. The usual occurance that people can only do part of a hackathon because of other engagements posed a big problem. Keeping up everybody's spirits and focusing on the outcome was pivotal for success.
It is unbelievable what can be achieved in a short time frame when we all work together. By Sunday afternoon we had a fully designed clickable MVP which showcased the basic concept. With a core group of 8 people out of the hackathon we continued the work on the app. Two month later we presented a fully working live product at a presentation of the Bristol City Council. This has been a satisfying and successful project. Sadly through Covid and changes in the City Hall the project lost its support and has since been taken offline.
With colleagues from Bristol Open Data, Ajara led on the development of an innovative web app for the charity/project I am the co-founder of, Period Friendly Places. Ajara is an inspiring leader, a strong feminist and supporter of young womens' development. Her passion for the project and the social cause behind it shone through, and her commitment to working collaboratively and making web design accessible was fantastic to see. I am very fortunate to have worked with Ajara and to know her as a person.
