Neha Adinamozhi Portfolio

FLUI (for the love of UI) Hackathon

Leading a team of 12 people, to organize a 2-week UI Design competition at Emily Carr University involving 200 stakeholders.

OVERVIEW:

My peer, Cailine and I are the co-founders of this paassion project that we started in May 2023. After completing the Eunoia Hackathon, we realized that this was an amazing opportunity that we wanted to bring to Emily Carr University and Vancouver as well.

I am the External Co-founder, taking care of logistics and ensuring that the event was properly organized whereas Cailine as the Internal co-founder taking care of the designs and branding of the hackathon. I led the external team consisting of 12 aspiring designers. Through this hackathon, I strongly developed my organization and communication skills, and most importantly, being able to take ownership and responsibility for a project from scratch.

ROLE:

Co-founder External leading a team of 12 people consisting of grads and undergrads in Vancouver

TIMELINE:

May 2023 - March 2024

SKILLS:

Figma, Trello, Project management, Team collaboration and Organization skills

PROBLEM STATEMENT

The design community at Emily Carr University needed diversity and growth.

Students were feeling dejected and unmotivated due to constant stress of job market insecurity and the lack of opportunities to continue growing in their design practice outside of school. How might we support our students and proactively provide opportunities and networking access ?

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

Things that I have learned through some challenges

Throughout the 10 months, there were many obstacles we had to overcome in order to make our hackathon successful. All of these challenges taught me valuables lessons in supporting a team, managing conflict as well as networking with aspiring designers.

Supporting my team through rejections

Despite our early start, we faced numerous rejections, which took a toll on team morale. As the team lead, I recognized the importance of maintaining morale and motivation, especially during trying times. To address this, I implemented weekly meetings to provide a platform for open communication and support. Additionally, I leveraged my network of connections to provide additional resources and guidance to bolster our efforts. Through our collective resilience, we persevered and eventually secured sponsorships. This experience taught us the importance of celebrating small wins, even amidst setbacks, and the value of seeking support from fellow team members to keep pushing forward.

Navigating bureaucratic hurdles

Trying to get our school, Emily Carr University ?(ECU) onboard was slightly more challenging than we expected as this was quite a new initiative we were undertaking with many diverse stakeholders involved. With consistent persistent and meetings with faculty members, we managed to have ECU support our hackathon. We also had to self-starters, once we had our side of the operations going, it was easier to show to others how far we had come and was easier to convince ECU to better support our initiative.