User Interviews = Great Project Ideas
Invite participants to do UX and issue research ahead of time
Having organizations with existing work to do included early is critical to recruit passionate participants. Stress that there is existing work we need help with, and as participants sign up, add them to a Slack team or other collaborative tool right away. Yes, even before the event starts!
As soon as we began getting applications for our last hackathon, we added people to Slack and invited the general channel to volunteer for a UX research project. We started our UX work about 2 months out from the date of the hackathon. But taking the time to have these conversations with the folks doing the work on the front lines in this area is valuable whether it's done months ahead of time, or a week ahead of time.
Sample pre-hackathon user interview process:
Let your experience researchers and UX folks lead the way, deputize willing volunteers to lead the UX group and give them independence.
Make intros with participating orgs so volunteers can meet/call to discuss their workflow and areas where they hit friction in trying to get their jobs done.
If possible, provide a study guide to your interviewers with suggested questions to help guide them in their conversations. An example study guide can be found at this link.
Distill the key takeaways from your interviews in to a deck that can be distributed to participants at your event.
Add this deck to a folder of resources for all participants to get background on the issue, including your study results, stats, articles, and intersectional issues that affect this problem set.
Remember, working with your UX team is also a great time to get organization feedback on your code of conduct and agreement (including open source licensing suggestions) for participants, and to ensure that they’re available to read in your distributed materials and prep for participants. Copies of some CoC examples can be found in this repo.
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