Lessons learned from Hack Day

The students had their first Hack Day last week, and today’s Studio gave the teams a chance to debrief. In lieu of our traditional Studio guest speaker, reps from several student teams spoke about their Hack Day experiences, what their groups achieved, and their lessons learned.

As students progress through their company projects, they are starting to have more definition about their final products– and with that have more concrete tasks to get through on a regular basis. October’s Hack Day was the first opportunity for students to devote a significant chunk of time to producing tangible work towards their final creation.

Many students spoke about the division of technical and theoretical work between MEng and MBA students. Some teams reported that engineers were left to do the technical work, while MBAs worked on written research and crafting the rationale behind their projects. In other groups, MBA students with more technical expertise worked alongside engineers. MBA students working in the WebMD company project group actually tackled their own engineering projects to build camaraderie and respect with their engineering teammates. But in all cases, the MEng and MBA students worked together to express and develop the product itself, and integrated efforts with both business and technical requirements.

One group that had a very successful Hack Day was the Canary team.

The Canary Team is working to build stronger cyber defense for home networks to keep users safe from data and identity theft. They plan to develop a system that will check routers for default passwords to ensure that home users are switching to strong passwords.

On Hack Day, Canary engineers spent the evening hacking routers and eventually built a router log-in prototype and prototype interface for their final product. MBA students in the group worked on the written research and presentation building they need to develop for the companies they’re working with. And they have a clear plan for next month’s Hack Day: gain access to more routers, polish their mobile app, and get their web interface and mobile app prototypes up and running.