The Impromptu Hellonext Hackweek - Five of a kind experience!

Hack Week 2022, at Hellonext, was a decision made over a cup of tea, literally! One Friday evening, we took a few minutes off of work to relax and bounce back! It was a moment of realization, chatting about how much Hellonext has grown over the past year and the stability our product has attained! 🥹🫶

It was time our team did something of a bigger magnitude to go one step ahead and be the best! It was time for a Hackathon, someone said! And boom the idea startled! ✨☄️

We did not hold back on the thought and immediately started contemplating what we could achieve in the set time - 3 days! 72 hours! ⏳ We had a holy grail of ideas accumulated over time, as we frequently had R&D brainstorming sessions. It was down to us deciding which ones to achieve and it did not take us longer than an hour to decide. Our goals were pretty aligned. 🎯

Monday dawned and we set sail! 🚀 I have to say, this is how our teams were but with lots of added excitement and snacks! 😂🍿🍱

We started the day with an intense discussion and then a deafening silence followed as we started hacking away! We had 4 teams running towards different goals to achieve.

Here’s what we built!

Chrome Extension ⚙️

While having a dedicated feedback management portal like Hellonext has its advantages, it's the little conveniences that add to a great experience! We are reviving our Chrome extension for Hellonext to capture your customer feedback effortlessly, on the go but this time on a whole nother level! 🏎

How great would it be to just select a bunch of text from your customer’s feedback on an email or chat and it just auto populates on your submission form? Boom submission done in a jiffy! 💫

You can totally do this with any text selection on a page! Right click and send it to the Hellonext plugin! The first 150 characters would auto populate as the title, the entire selection as the description. Tweak the content and add images if you prefer! Making this submission on a user’s behalf? Add their email address and hit submit! You’re good to go! 😇

Letterbox — Now submit ideas via email! 📧

We love enhancing the flexibility in feedback submission! Customers give a lot of commendable ideas and suggestions for products to grow. We have to agree that some of the most eminent ideas that we’ve implemented on Hellonext, were given by our customers. Why not give them the flexibility to submit these ideas effortlessly? 🤌🏼

Hellonext’s Letterbox was one of the most requested features on Hellonext. And we are so pumped for our customers to check it out! What are you waiting for? Go try this out on your dashboard! 💃🏻 Drop an email to us if you have any suggestions! 🙌🏼

It narrows down feedback submission to just 3 steps!

1. Generate an email address for your customers to send ideas to.
2. Set one of your boards as the email board (or) alternatively you can create a dedicated board and set that as the email board.
3. Notify your users via your web page/application about this email address.

Reporting & Analytics Dashboard 📊

The team had the most fun just by looking at how colorful yet data driven the Analytics Dashboard is! 😂 Here’s what they had to say about their experience!

“It was amazing creating an analytics module for Hellonext. The charts are coming out great and it looks beautiful. Looking forward to integrating it and setting it live soon for our customers to explore. 💜”

This module is fully data informed, starting from a chart on weekly submissions, post distribution across statuses, board and assignee to day based activity charts. A lot more for you all to explore. Here’s a sneak peak! 👀

How sleek, neat and pretty is that? 😍

The DIE Framework — Make impactful product decisions now 💪🏼

Teams tend to lose time in redoing decisions, sometimes even after development starts. Not to add to the stress when ad hoc building is needed, which is always a challenge. Attimes, this can be so nerve wracking, we end up only building the “Phase 1” of a feature. We’ve been there, done that, struggled and finally managed a way out of this loop! Thanks to our amazing team members for giving us a way out! 💛

Let’s say we need to build a feature which has a lot of sub features to arrive at the final build. Start by assigning a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for the feature, someone who,

• Stays organized during a complex process and keeps focused on the long term goal. 🎯
• Adopts a brutally honest approach for decision making.😇
• Interact without getting flustered or causing confusion. ✨
• Able to cut through the noise and stand strong in decisions.💪🏼
• Doesn’t let challenges knock them down.🔥
• Foresee the problem and knock them off before it derails the project. 👀

Now, the DIE framework Deliverable = Impact * Effort which is quite straightforward kicks in!

Step 1: We use the MOSCOW method to classify the Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have.

Step 2: Focus on the Must haves and Should haves after that you can do could haves if you have some time extra after crucial developments. This will give you the perfect mix of features for the deliverable!

Step 3: Perform an Impact vs. Effort analysis

• Impact being, how much difference will this make to our customer? How much delight will it create?
• Effort being, how much engineering effort is required by the team? Does this justify the experience?

This will help you arrive at the Impact and effort required.

We all love an emotionally balanced Hackathon! 😇

While the teams are heads down bringing out the best in them and being creative, the question is, do they really get to enjoy the moment? Do they feel the energy and retain the motivation, in the long run? Well it's quite possible to miss these!

I cannot stress on the necessity to take a few minutes off during the hackathon, get to terms with what you’ve achieved so far and what is yet to be done!

Clear your headspace, regroup and jump in again! ⭐️

These few minutes of regrouping can really go a long way! A quick demo or a presentation at the end of each day can bring up suggestions from your team and you can choose the one’s that work for your product!

I am extremely happy to say this is exactly what we did proving we are an emotionally intelligent group! 💙 I know it's self praise but it's worth it! 😄 Even though the goal is the victory of all participants, a few minutes of relaxation and mindfulness will boost our creativity. 🎨

Also, no coding? no problem! 🙌🏼

If someone tells me hackathon is only for coders then we are gonna have a debate because hackathons are inclusive, hackathons are innovation and it does not stop with just programming! The stigma needs to be wiped off of the face of earth! 🤷🏻‍♀️Simply because I am not a programmer, I’ve hesitated and been intimidated by the idea of a Hackathon, for many years! It’s time that changed!

An area that I’ve always been intrigued about was marketing. So I took this opportunity to talk to people about Hellonext! For starters, a technique that’s always available for generating new leads is cold-emailing. It was time to start prospecting!

While I was able to quickly define my target audience, I took a lot of time in making a list of leads. Investing more time in prospecting than just sending email is absolutely worth it otherwise you end up talking to an uninterested audience! AngelList and Product Hunt were the hotspots that I sourced the majority of the leads from. I’ve started shooting out these emails and it has been a good start for our team. We are excited to see where this takes us! 💙

At the end of the week, we had our thoughts aligned, knowing it's our wholesome love for Hellonext that keeps us going! We were motivated, learning on a huge scale, so much collaboration, humor, food and competition, all under one roof. 🤩

I was able to drill down five major realizations our teams learnt! Let's call it a five of a kind experience! 🖐🏼💙

• The impact of team bonding 👬🏽👬🏽
• Induced a sense of responsibility 🤝🏼
• The power of being focused and driven 🎯
• Nurturing the practice of thinking from a customer’s perspective 🤔💭
• Expecting the unexpected 🚀

One mind boggling question we were left with was can every day be a hack day? Oh the amount of energy, excitement and enthusiasm that could add! Well, that’s a thought for us to entertain and reflect on. 😄🙇🏻‍♀️ But, hey! It’s truly amazing to think about what a team could achieve in 72 hours. Expected the unexpected, right? 🥳

Do check out Hellonext and sign up for a 14 day trial to start exploring these cool new features! 🚀⚡️✨

Until next time fellas! Adios! 😃👋🏼