{"id":1558,"date":"2015-06-04T15:44:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T15:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/?p=1558"},"modified":"2018-11-30T14:37:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T14:37:46","slug":"june-hackathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2015\/06\/04\/june-hackathon\/","title":{"rendered":"June Hackathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a post by Alex Cunningham, our Communications Administrator<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, the mygov.scot team embarked on another one of its infamous hackathons. The hugely successful\u00a0two-day\u00a0event\u00a0included a lot of design, development and\u00a0dedication,\u00a0and (keeping\u00a0with tradition) a\u00a0lot of pizza!<\/span><\/p>\n

A few days before the hackathon\u00a0team members started\u00a0to jot\u00a0down their ideas. On Thursday morning, like children rummaging through their stockings on Christmas day, we checked the board on the first hackday\u00a0to find it filled\u00a0to the brim with awesome ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Having a bounty of presents,\u00a0we had to decide which three ideas\u00a0to take forward. The contributors each took 30 seconds to pitch their idea before a democratic vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a03 successful candidates\u00a0were:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2013 The GeekPeek app!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 The ability to save and store results when using the mygov.scot Business Rates Calculator<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0A \u2018Minority\u00a0Report\u2019 style\u00a0sitemap!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Everyone\u00a0divided up into teams, each with a range of different skills, and set off to work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our first idea was to set up\u00a0the GeekPeek\u00a0App\u00a0to test it\u2019s\u00a0viability\u00a0as a tool to the\u00a0team. Mark Caulfield, Lead Front End Developer, gives\u00a0us more information about the product and its background.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Developers would like to be able to easily share\u00a0progress on a new feature to stakeholders;\u00a0GeekPeek enables anyone to view a developer\u2019s recent commits to the\u00a0main product line, and crucially, to view the latest work live\u00a0from the developer\u2019s PC before it is available to view on the test\u00a0servers.\u00a0This allows everyone to have an instant view of current progress, whilst enjoying a quick\u00a0develop\/approve\/modify cycle. GeekPeek\u00a0is a third-party tool which\u00a0works on both mobile and desktop browsers\u00a0and can be\u00a0a deployable android\u00a0and IOS application. For styling, GeekPeek uses\u00a0Google\u2019s\u00a0Material Design guidelines<\/span><\/a>. It uses angular JS<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to handle user interactions and data fetching\/refreshing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rachel Patrick, Digital Designer, created custom avatars (pictured on left below). Rajesh\u00a0Yarlagadda,\u00a0Test Engineer,\u00a0and\u00a0myself\u00a0created the software by pair-programming on my\u00a0Mac.<\/span><\/p>\n

The software was well received at the hackathon\u00a0demo \u2013 the\u00a0tool is ideal for UX,\u00a0designers and external stakeholders to use and will be taken forward for internal use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The second idea\u00a0was some design tweaks\u00a0for the Business Rates Calculator and Chay Nicholson, Creative Lead, gave us more information on\u00a0its development.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

You are the hero<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The best thing about being told a funny joke is being able to recall it in the correct order and making a friend laugh. And that defines the success of YouTube \u2013 see a funny video, share it with a friend \u2013 they laugh. You are the hero. In the world of mygov.scot we replace \u2018the laugh\u2019 with \u2018oh that\u2019s really useful\u2019. When the user has a\u00a0piece of information in their safe-keeping and\u00a0they decide to forward it on, they then become the hero.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lost property<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Taking the Business Rates Calculator as an example, we looked at a way to allow users to save their results. The Business Rates Calculator allows users to find out rates on business premises. A simple 3-step process displays the rateable value, relief applied and net liability at the final stage. As it currently stands there is a call to action (CTA)\u00a0taking the user to the relevant local authority website. At\u00a0this point the user is no longer able to view their original rate calculation. Our idea was to make this a more rewarding experience by allowing the user to easily capture this information for reference at a later stage. We looked at introducing a clear option up-front where the user could email a copy of the results to themselves. To test this idea we made some enhancements to the UI and hierarchy and focussed on maintaining visual consistency from web to email. Meanwhile back-end groundwork was being carried out on email capture and data storage. It\u2019s not earth-shattering, but the point of this hack was to create the most fulfilling endpoint for the user and test the ground for potential deployment across other areas of the site.<\/span><\/p>\n

Push the envelope<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

People use their email inbox as a filing system and a source of reference; by the simplest method of entering an email address and hitting \u2018go\u2019, we have taken away the need to jot down info on the back of an envelope. We are creating digital services and first we should look for a complete digital solution, provided that is the most satisfying user experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

To have the edge<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

A strong focus on the UX\u00a0and the UI addresses the ever-recurring U2 problem \u2013 \u201cI still haven\u2019t found what I\u2019m looking for\u201d. Well\u2026 here\u2019s what you\u2019re looking for, and by the way, do you want to save that for later?<\/span><\/p>\n

Our last product demo was the \u2018Minority Report\u2019-style\u00a0board for displaying our website sitemap.\u00a0Scott Langley, Senior UX Designer,\u00a0has given us more information on this\u00a0idea\u2019s history.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

We wanted a tool to help\u00a0our team\u00a0explore the mygov.scot site\u00a0content\u00a0\u2013 we decided to build\u00a0a\u00a0gesture controlled tool, similar to the one in the film \u201cMinority Report\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To make it possible to see at a glance how content is grouped (and the connections and relationships that may exist between content items). The User Experience team also wanted to encourage and promote group discussions around the information architecture and bring the sitemap to life in an interactive way.<\/span><\/p>\n

We created a version of the sitemap\u00a0in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format and used the D3.js JavaScript library to visualise and manipulate the data in a web page.\u00a0The new sitemap\u00a0was hosted on an NGINX\u00a0web server running on a Raspberry Pi. We viewed the sitemap\u00a0in Internet Explorer on a Microsoft Xbox One and were able to navigate it with hand gestures using Microsoft Kinect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commenting on the hackathon, Jose Casal-Gimenez, Programme Director for mygov.scot said:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGoing home buzzing with joy about how awesome the mygov.scot people can be. Running hackathons is a great way for teams to investigate new ideas, to unleash the creativity of people and to foster the kind of collaborative and enjoyable environment we all strive for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The event was a massive success with excellent pieces of work produced in just 2 days. Congratulations to everyone involved with this hackathon you have really outdone yourselves. It is a pleasure to be working with such amazingly creative people.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be sharing updates on these features, and much more on social, so follow the team via <\/i>@mygovscot<\/i><\/span><\/a> on Twitter for more updates. Want to comment? Let us know below!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a post by Alex Cunningham, our Communications Administrator Last week, the mygov.scot team embarked on another one of its infamous hackathons. The hugely successful\u00a0two-day\u00a0event\u00a0included a lot of design, development and\u00a0dedication,\u00a0and (keeping\u00a0with tradition) a\u00a0lot of pizza! A few days before the hackathon\u00a0team members started\u00a0to jot\u00a0down their ideas. On Thursday morning, like children rummaging through…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-public-services","category-mygov-scot","tag-product"],"yoast_head":"\nJune Hackathon - Digital<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gov.scot\/digital\/2015\/06\/04\/june-hackathon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"June Hackathon - Digital\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a post by Alex Cunningham, our Communications Administrator Last week, the mygov.scot team embarked on another one of its infamous hackathons. 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