My whole hackathon journey was a learning experience from both of the teams.
When I came across KCA hackathon poster via WhatsApp, I had the confidence of applying, having a friend who I knew he will agree to my call, where we were supposed to apply in a group of 4-5 members, we made sure each one to try to convince two members. Specializing more in women in tech, thanks God we had a woman in our group, and she helped. We tried to understand the hackathon topic, which talked more on youth in entrepreneurship. We break down with factors that youths consider in majoring in entrepreneurship.
We had several physical and online meetings. The first meeting we met at school where we had all the hackathon’s group in a room being briefed what was being expected among us. We were given a 2 weeks period of web designing.
For us, steps to design a website requires 7 steps:
- Goal identification: Where I work with the client to determine what goals the new website needs to fulfill. e., what its purpose is.
- Scope definition: Once we know the site’s goals, we can define the scope of the project. e., what web pages and features the site requires to fulfill the goal, and the timeline for building those out.
- Sitemap and wireframe creation: With the scope well-defined, we can start digging into the sitemap, defining how the content and features we defined in scope definition will
- Content creation: Now that we have a bigger picture of the site in mind, we can start creating content for the individual pages, always keeping search engine optimization (SEO) in mind to help keep pages focused on a single It’s vital that you have real content to work with for our next stage:
- Visual elements: With the site architecture and some content in place, we can start working on the visual brand. Depending on the client, this may already be well-defined, but you might also be defining the visual style from the ground Tools like style tiles, mood boards, and element collages can help with this process.
- Testing: By now, you’ve got all your pages and defined how they display to the site visitor, so it’s time to make sure it all works. Combine manual browsing of the site on a variety of devices with automated site crawlers to identify everything from user experience issues to simple broken links.
- Launch: Once everything’s working beautifully, it’s time to plan and execute your site launch! This should include planning both launch timing and communication strategies — e., when will you launch and how will you let the world know? After that, it’s time to break out the bubbly
We later presented the web design, congratulations to all the team that made it to the final, all groups had lovely web designs each group having different components. we had the courage as a group, and we did our best, answering questions being asked by the Judges. The Judges gave their observations after we finished the presentations, each group being congratulated and highlighted main points, we wrote it down. The web master also gave his observations, and telling us features of a good website. The ranking was done among us, Thank God we emerged the winner! We were all in high spirit, we did the interview, being my first, haha!
During the development phase, we used the CMS, WordPress! Yes, I had an entry-level experience, Thanks to my team members for the motivation, there were one who were experts. I find it hard sometimes to use WordPress components, it reaches a point when preferred coding because most of the components needed the Pro version, I find it expensive but it took a good time of my understanding everything, I feel like an expert now!
Our team leader, Kiragu broke down the pages so as everyone could have a particular task to work one, having the help from Alex and the web master, without forgetting Dr. Muchiri for he gave us the advice on some areas we needed to improve.
After one month of implementation, we handed the website to the web master who did miracles to the success website application we are having, Hooray!
We had our last meetings; I attended the one at 6 p.m. to familiarize with the changes made on the website. Alex and the web master presented the website to the investors, the investors feedback was positive, and this aligned to the hopes we had. The website was handed to the content creators, and is being launch soon!
My whole hackathon journey was a learning experience from both of the teams.
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