How the hackathon approach can drive transformation

For those of us operating in the built environment, our ability to catalyse change and drive innovation is vital to our roles as future makers. As problem solvers, tool developers, technology wizards and tinkerers, it can feel natural to jump straight into solutions.

But what if we don’t quite know what we should be developing a solution for? It can be difficult to imagine innovations and new ways of doing things as if plucked out of thin air. Divine inspiration is often not the route to a great idea or product, but rather finding one while exploring something within, or tangential to, that idea’s domain.

At Remap, we’ve run numerous hackathons and foresight workshops with our clients to try to tease this out. Understanding the challenges in our industry, working through what might be driving them and exploring the uncertainties that those drivers create can help stimulate us to ideate great solutions.

As architects, we’ve been doing this since the beginning of time. We design through inquisition, and we have a deeply ingrained critique culture. Techniques for evaluating design and providing feedback on how well they meet user needs and client objectives.

We also have well-rehearsed methods of rapid design exploration in the form of design charettes. Collaborative workshops where a team of designers, community members, and other stakeholders work together to develop a vision or design for a project. This is generally focused on the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of design.

But what about for the processes that we undertake, and the technologies that we use, to design? Sometimes it feels as though there is a disconnect between designers and the tools that we use to do our work.