Making finding your people a little less intimidating.

TL;DR

Finding a team at a hackathon can be stressful. Previously, Hack the North hackers relied on Slack to find teammates, posting what they were looking for and hoping the right person happened to see it.

For 2026, we wanted to replace that chaos with a dedicated Hacker Directory: a browsable space where hackers could discover people based on their interests, skills, project ideas, and team needs.

I was the sole product designer for the experience, working closely with two developers and a dev lead to design the directory, profile creation flow, and individual hacker profiles.

My focus was simple:

Make finding your people feel more like discovery than networking.

What I Designed:

The Problem

Finding a team shouldn't feel like begging.

Hackathons are collaborative by nature, but finding the people to collaborate with isn’t always easy. The old team-formation process lived primarily in Slack. Messages were unstructured, easy to miss, and didn’t give hackers an easy way to understand who was looking, what they wanted to build, or whether they’d be a good fit.

There was no easy way to understand who else was looking, what they were interested in, whether they already had a partial team, or whether you’d actually be a good fit together. The Hacker Directory was created as a structured alternative: a browsable space where hackers could share what they wanted to build, what they were good at, how many teammates they needed, and how to reach them.

However, the product problem went beyond organizing information.

How might we make putting yourself out there feel less intimidating?

The Hacker Profile

Designing the Hacker Profile

The profile needed to do more than list skills. We wanted it to answer:

Profiles combined practical information with personality:

We didn’t want the profile to feel like a résumé, rather a reason for people to start conversations.

Sample Filled out Hacker Directory Profile Browsing + Profile Preview

Getting Hackers into the Directory

The directory only works if people use it.

We didn’t want profile creation to become another task hackers had to remember. So we introduced it directly into RSVP. Hackers could opt into creating a profile while they were already registering for Hack the North, then return later to edit their profile, update their teammate needs, or opt out. I designed the flow to feel less like filling out a form and more like introducing yourself.

Going from brainstorming to the high fidelity prototype of the RSVP flow.

Designing the Awkward States

The simple interface hid a lot of product decisions.

The experience had to account for more than the ideal flow:

I worked through these states alongside development so the experience stayed consistent beyond the happy path. The directory was also intentionally not a messaging platform. Its job was discovery; Slack remained the place where the actual conversation happened.

Designing Different States of Teammate Adding in the “Edit Profile” Section

Unique Components with different states created for the Hacker Directory

The directory was designed as part of a broader shift in how Hack the North approached team formation: profiles would be collected during RSVP, the directory would open once enough hackers had joined, and the old team-formation Slack channel could be archived and replaced with the new experience.

Key Takeaways

Designing for people, not just profiles