July 5, 2016 Booz Allen Hamilton Crowdsources Stunning ‘Swarm’ Drone Dashboard Designs

Hackathons inspire greatness. To see today’s best innovators hone their craft in such a high-pressure and fast-paced environment showcases that speed is the new currency of IT. They show the art of what’s possible and deliver a working solution that motivates future innovative thinking.

Taking an already great idea to the next level

The Hack the Sky hackathon, hosted this weekend by the U.S. NAVY, focused on ‘swarm’ UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) capabilities. During the event, participants faced the challenges of hacking and working on:

• Wireless Authentication
• Robot Operating System (ROS) Security
• Algorithms for Cooperative Search

The hackathon was already poised to be a big success. That’s when our partners at Booz Allen Hamilton decided to inject even more innovative thinking by infusing the physical hackathon with a virtual, crowdsourcing design competition.

Booz Allen implemented intuitive user dashboards to visualize the swarm drones, which was a perfect design complement to the physical hackathon and helped deliver tremendous added value to the good work happening on-site.

Booz Allen approached our team at Topcoder with this unique opportunity to pair a virtual crowdsourcing competition with a physical hackathon to create a completely new experience. After coordinating with our Booz Allen counterparts, a Topcoder copilot presented back the crowdsourcing challenge specification. Booz Allen helped refine the specification and it was soon ready for launch.

Together, our teams chose to execute a Rapid User Experience (RUX) design competition with Topcoder. A RUX was ideal for this scenario because:

• A RUX competition takes 72 hours, delivering results in a very short time frame.
• Booz Allen wanted to garner a wide variety of design options, and they needed to showcase dashboard views for 3 key user personas – Commander, Marine, and Swarm Engineer
• Booz Allen wanted to focus on core dashboard features while also leaving room for the creative genius of the crowdsourcing community.

The Results of the Booz Allen Hamilton 72-Hour Swarm Drone Visualization Challenge

First, the key metrics:

• 72 hours (3 days) from start to finish
• 66 Topcoder members registered for the challenge
• 23 Topcoder members competed
• Competitors represented 17 different countries across 5 continents

See the full results:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MA5S921ZYAlNfbw0kh-YHGC-y4230jZjtWhnU-e-_CQ/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

Booz Allen Continues Pushing the Boundaries of Crowdsourced Innovation

We must thank 2 distinct parties. First and always, our Topcoder community members who time in, time out, outperform and showcase the power of crowdsourcing with the best design and development community on the planet. You rocked it yet again. While we thank each individual who participated in this Rapid User Experience (RUX) competition, we’d like to congratulate our top 5 winners.

1. iamtong – Thailand
2. yiming – China
3. egislr – Indonesia
4. ArteVisual – Venezuela
5. Tewibowo – Indonesia

And to our partners at Booz Allen, we thank you. You continue to push the boundaries of how crowdsourcing can effectively be used to execute on digital projects faster, delivering higher levels of innovation.