Hackathon Branding and UX Design

Overview

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ScottyLabs is a student organization at Carnegie Mellon University devoted to helping students learn about and explore interesting topics in technology. We organize educational events to help people learn how to make things, host workshops to give students the opportunity to work on projects outside of class, and develop applications and services for the campus community. The largest event we host every year is TartanHacks, Pittsburgh's largest Hackathon.
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As the UX design lead, I lead a team of designers to produce brand, advertisement materials, and merchandise for the event.

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Process

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After knowing the decided theme of Travel Around the World our design team started brainstorming logo design ideas. Responsibilities of the design team include:

‍Logo Design: Create a logo that captures the essence of travel and innovation. The design should be versatile enough to be used in various mediums such as digital platforms, print, and merchandise.

‍Branding: Develop a cohesive branding strategy, including colour schemes, typography, and visual elements that resonate with the travel theme. Consider how these elements will work in both digital and physical contexts.
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‍App Interface Design: Design the UI/UX for a mobile application interface that attendees will use during the hackathon. This app will serve as the main tool for participants to receive updates, connect with teams, submit projects, and navigate the event.

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Since the mascot of CMU is the black scotty dog and our club is named ScottyLabs, we really wanted to incorporate the dog as a part of our logo design.

Early sketches I created featured stamps, plane tickets, luggage tags and many more. Ultimately, we decided to settle on the element of the dog and iterate from this point on.

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Iteration

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When designing the look of the scotty dog we went through several rounds of ideation. Our goal is to create a simple yet recognizable design of a short-legged black dog.

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Finalize Design

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The final design we chose is very geometric yet still easy to recognize. Building on this logo, we developed a complete design guide for the tech team to implement the design on to the hackanthon website, the mobile app, and event merchandise.

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Creating the Assets

Additional assets we designed include a promotional banner, social media posts, and mobile UIs. As a part of the effort to improve user experience, we also redesigned the app user flow to ensure a smooth and understandable app experience.

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Solution

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After finalizing the basic design, we then moved on to creating variations of the logo. Since our theme is Around the World, the one thing that came to mind was stamps that people put on letter. To me, them are the best representation of the idea of traveling, adventure, and discoveries. Thus, we decided to design stamps for countries around the world.

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