Cutie Hack
Cutie Hack is a 24-hour hackathon hosted at the University of California Riverside. Unlike most hackathons, Cutie Hack is catered towards beginners looking to get their feet wet. Throughout a 24 hour period, participants work on projects, attend workshops to learn about new technologies, and network with industry partners.
The Committee
Comprised of ACM, IEEE, and non engineering students the members of the hackathon committee started planning for two upcoming hackathon events. The students would divide themselves into developer, marketing, operations, and sponsorship teams. With just a summer to complete their tasks, each team met and drafted plans for each event.
The graphic design team and web development team decided on collaborating in order to keep a unified design standard. During the first meeting it would be agreed upon that the theme of Cutie Hack would be one of simple geometric figures. It would later on evolve to include architecture.
The Design
Tasked to create assets for the site, I sat down and wondered how our theme related to the hackathon. How could the sleek precision of architecture and the elegance of mathematical shapes spread the message of technology? More importantly, how would I be able to synergies both ideas to a viable product that would attract engineers?
The answer came to me in the creation of software itself. Both software and city scapes share one trait, a builder. There is always someone behind the creation of software and there is always someone designing the next skyscraper.
I imagined the buildings themselves as circuitry. A capacitor, resistor, a simple computer chip, all of them buildings. Using an isometric grid, I created a sample to propose to the team. The first design received a positive reception and so I iterated on it. Adding subtle changes like shading, the design started to come together.
The Message
With the design completed there was a missing piece. The team had yet to decide on a slogan. Last year Citrus Hack had a slogan with the message "What will you discover?" I propose this years slogan be "What will you build?"
Closing Thoughts
This was a fun project coming from someone was primarily on the web development team. The main problems I see with this design is the lack of color. We want this hackathon to be fun for newcomers and this direction is cold and monotone. It could be off putting for a certain group of people.
The Demo
In order to highlight some potential changes to the design guidelines I built a small prototype showing off how color could add to the Cutie Hack design. The demo is a simple web page of a possible sign up screen with a hover affect showing the transition between circuits and buildings. The bright red symbolizes the universities location within the mountain desert area.
