My project Hidayat secures third place in the GovTech Hackathon 2021

From October 8 to 10 2021, Code for Pakistan, a non-profit organization that promotes government and civic tech innovation organized the GovTech Hackathon 2021. The hackathon invited people to think through and build innovative solutions to challenges that will transform Pakistan in the areas of education, health, climate change, mobility, travel and tourism.

This was the first time I was participating in a hackathon. After sending multiple team-up requests, I teamed up with two participants to build a platform that aims to connect student counselors with students.

This platform was inspired from four issues identified below.

Growing workforce: Pakistan has the fifth largest population in the world and currently, 64% of our population is below 30 and increasing.

Lack of career counselors: We as a nation are currently facing a population boom and we don't have the career counseling resources to cater to the needs of our young population.

School Drop out rate: An intelligent child is pushed for prestigious careers and society has failed to realize the link between demand and supply in the Human development market.

Suicide rates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have tremendously risen. For many students, their future is tied with their academics. Due to this perception, many students who get low scores have given up their lives to suicide.

What was my role?

Amna Afzal was the project lead. She is a researcher from Rawalpindi who holds a firm belief in numbers and experiences.

I was the responsible for the UX and UI. I took the idea and nailed down the user experience and the visual design of the application.

Mahwish Nazli is the software developer from Islamabad who took my designs and build the front-end interface of the application.

At first Amna was going to name it CareerCo but I suggested other names like Mushawirat (meaning ‘advice’ in Urdu) or Hidayat (meaning ‘guidance’). We then agreed on the name Hidayat.

How Hidayat works?

The application would be partnering up with schools and NGOs to provide access to students. They would be provided a school code through which they would be able to create a profile. They would be required to take a series of tests then they would be provided career counselor preferences on the dashboard. After the student selects the counselor they can book an appointment with them at anytime from anywhere.

How we did it it?

We conducted meetings and kept everybody in the loop through WhatsApp as the hackathon was held remotely.

We used FigJam during our meetings to collaborate on segmenting our targeted audience, build user flows and defining the overall solution.

Segmenting Hidayat’s core audience and defining the user needs; we architected the application into to four core audiences: students, schools, parents and the counsellors.

The students Hidayat targets range from eight to twelve grades. This means their ages range from thirteen to eighteen. Since many teenagers do not own smartphones, it is the parents and schools that will register themselves, create an ID and set it for students to book meetings with available counsellors.

Finally the user flow was created:

After the user flow was created I started designing the app. Using Figma, the most popular cloud-based prototyping tool, I designed the frames and connected them with each other for prototyping. I also designed the logo of the project.

You can view it here.

The project is still in prototyping phase.

What we learned

As a remote team, we learned the importance of collaboration. When building a project it is important for the whole team to be on the same page. It is important to assign appropriate deadlines and allow for a relaxed approach when managing the project and team as we had to do this in just two days. Secondly, team work is crucial in bringing any project from ideation to the the final product.

The result

Hidayat secured third place in the GovTech Hackathon and I’ve could have never felt any better.

This was the first time in my life I have ever secured a major honour in any competition. The position holders were awarded prizes at the Digital Youth Summit held in Peshawar on 13 to 14 November 2021. We also had the opportunity to pitch our idea to startup investors.

The future of Hidayat is to be able cater to all the career counseling needs from fifth grade till the age of 30.