[van]quest
Vancouver tech scene, gamified.
Vancouver Tech Week 2024 is Vancouver's first week-long gathering for all builders and hackers in tech. The VTW '24 Hackathon is in search of a solution that could cultivate a more cohesive tech community.
Inspired by Pokemon GO and Queering the Map, our team built [van]quest - a gamified app that allows one to explore the Vancouver tech world, go on "quests," collect tokens, and level up to show up on the leaderboard.
Team
Paula Norjinbat, Product Manager
Monica Huynh, Product Designer
Mark Pettersson, Developer
Abhishek Arora, Developer
Nam Mai, Developer
Judges
Neil Chong-Kit, Founder @ AKA Profiles
Leo Antonoff, Product Design Lead @ Rippling
Toby Tobkin, Founding Engineer @ PermaFrostAI, ex-Google
✿ What did we accomplish?
Placement
2nd place
Deliverable
within 8 hours of development
Shoutout
Best business solution
✿ Why Vancouver tech?
The tech ecosystem in Vancouver struggles to position itself as a leading international tech hub. Our community events are often siloed, with knowledge-sharing and networking scattered across disciplines.
This hackathon looks for solutions to one big question:
How might we make the Vancouver tech community more unified?
✿ What are the problem spaces?
Our team identified 3 key areas in community-building where our solution might target.
Networking
How might we make tech networking in Vancouver more rewarding and valuable?
Mentorship
How might we foster more meaningful mentorship in the Vancouver tech industry?
Job Searching
How might we consolidate tech opportunities in Vancouver for higher visibility?
Excited by the possibility of gamifying networking and crafting a more immersive experience, we decided to focus on making tech networking in Vancouver more rewarding.
✿ How do users feel?
Despite time constraints, we did our best to budget time for user research and product ideation. We conducted 3 quick user interviews and gathered quantitative insights from polls that reached 30 tech workers in Vancouver within an hour.
Confusion
100%
of users find that networking events are fragmented across many platforms
Lack of motivation
60%
of users feel unmotivated to attend networking events frequently
Drawing deep inspirations from Pokemon GO and Queering the Map, we dreamed up a solution where networking is completely gamified - users could explore the Vancouver tech world, go on "quests," collect tokens, and level up to show up on the leaderboard.
Within 6 hours… we built [van]quest.
Launch
Introducing [van]quest - where tech networking is made fun and rewarding. Embark on tech quests around Vancouver.
✿ What did we accomplish?
Placement
2nd place
Deliverable
within 8 hours of development
Shoutout
Best business solution
Special thanks to the people that dreamed together and made this hackathon so memorable.
Photo credit goes to Amy Lu at Vancouver Tech Week.