Planning

As the acting PM and UX designer, I took ownership of early planning, sprint pacing, team alignment, and overall product direction. Before the event even started, I initiated pre-hack planning to:

• Align expectations, skillsets, and goals across the team

• Lead ideation through structured exercises like Crazy 8s

• Create a shared FigJam board with timelines, roles, idea banks, and product phases

• Attend Snap Spectacles workshops and report back key technical possibilities to the team

Key Contribution: I set the tone for a structured but agile sprint that gave us time for strategy, testing, and creative breathing room. This made sure we were prepped to get started on our design and development with clarity as soon as the hackathon begins.

Strategic Research

I led a 3-part research approach to define the problem and validate our solution:

Foundational Research

We brainstormed user problems and core value areas we could realistically address within our constraints. The goal here is to decide, what do we build, what are the user problems, and how can we solve them?

Secondary Research

We dug into the needs of neurodivergent individuals through studies; particularly around social anxiety, communication challenges, and sensory overstimulation.

Competitive Audit

Analyzed assistive tools like AGP, AEGIS, and Superpower Glass to identify:

• Feature gaps

• Hardware limitations

• Potential for XR augmentation

Define

Using insights from research, I led the creation of:

Ideation & Roadmap

As soon as the idea was finalized, I broke down our scope into feasible deliverables based on time and tech.

What I did as PM:

• Identified “must-haves” vs “nice-to-haves” using a mini MoSCoW prioritization

• Split work into key tracks: research, dev, UI, testing

• Created a task board

• Delegated ownership: Devs focused on researching and building core Snap Lens functionality while I handled user flows and UI wireframes

• Checked in at set milestones (~every 6 hours) to evaluate pivot needs or unblock teammates

What I did as UX Designer:

Outcome

🏆 2nd Place – ImmerseGT Snap Spectacles XR Track

• Delivered MVP within 48hrs

• Snap mentors called the solution “practical, meaningful, and scalable”

• Presented to a panel of XR and startup mentors with strong response

🌱 what i learned 🌱

• Proactive planning made everything smoother

• Clarifying ownership upfront prevented blockers

• Prioritizing a simple, testable idea over a complex one gave us the time to polish

Next time I'd :

• Allocate more time to structure user validation

• Push for earlier prototyping for real-time testing so that we can create a quicker decision matrix for tech constraints