Hack Days, Shopify
Staying relevant. Evolving cultural programs at a high-growth company.
Hack Days is a beloved tradition at Shopify, taking place over two days once per quarter. Employees step aside from their day-to-day work to ‘hack’ on a new problem in hopes of becoming the next Hack Days Champion. Hack Days keeps innovation alive and well. Projects have gone on to become fully-fledged products of their own, like our Point-of-Sale system, flash sale app Frenzy, and carbon offsetting during checkout. It’s a high-impact culture program and a ton of fun
The problem
Anecdotally, the buzz and excitement surrounding Hack Days felt like it was dwindling. I started digging into the data with a fellow Culture teammate Lisa Madokoro. It confirmed the number of projects and participants had flat-lined over the past year, despite the company growing like gangbusters over the same timeframe. We kicked off a research project to help us answer why—why had Hack Days lost its mojo?
Barriers to participation
As Shopify grew and scaled across offices, timezones and opened up to remote working, the Hack Days format hadn’t evolved to keep up. Lisa compiled a list of barriers to participation. It included things like hard to find suitable projects, not enough time, support from leadership was lacking, too hard to win. The incentive to participate just wasn’t enough to pull many away from their regular work.
My roles
Art Direction
UX Research
Product Design
Product Management
Whiteboards from an early kick-off sprint.
Process
We pulled together a group of people who had a vested interest in Hack Days. We aligned on a definition for Hack Days to help clarify and communicate its purpose, setting the stage to brainstorm ideas for tackling some of the barriers. We plotted the ideas onto an impact/effort matrix to help figure out which ones to start with first. And since Hack Days happens once a quarter, we’d iteratively chip away at them and measure the changes' impact on participation.
The App
First up was the Hack Days App, the central portal where Shopifolk go to create and signup for projects. It’s also where people eventually went to vote for their favourites. The app already existed but was in major need of an overhaul to bring it up to code. Jess Joly and Christopher Bolton were two superstar devs up for the task. I eventually recruited some side-of-the-desk content writing from Tamsin Douglas too. We practically had an entire product team, with me acting as a product manager and designer.
We updated the app to React and applied Shopify’s excellent new design system Polaris. We connected it to our internal backend, which meant everyone would have a record of their participation and see what other people had worked on and what projects won, i.e. increase visibility across the org. We improved the flow for finding and signing up for a project and eased communication between team members.
Hack Days keeps Shopify’s culture of innovation and experimentation alive while connecting Shopifolk across teams and regions. By coming together to solve problems outside their day-to-day, Shopifolk learn and have fun while producing something that will help make Shopify better.
Hack Days defined
Wireflows (a mashup of a wireframe and UX flow) for the Hack Days App
Landing page
The week leading up to Hack Days, we’d open up the app for projects and team recruitment. I wanted to build hype in any way possible to encourage participation. So we created a fun landing page for the app. Floating around the page were 3D blocks, one for each project. As Hack Days approached, the number of floating blocks would grow and grow. The landing page was displayed across all prominent office TV screens, reminding people to ‘get on it!’
Branding
Given that the Hack Days App and the program would be getting a refresh, the brand needed one too. When people saw it, they would immediately understand ‘oh, this is exciting and new!’. Chris Langer, another designer on the Culture Team, came through with the visuals under my brief of ‘use blocks please’. I liked the idea of blocks because they’re playful—you can build almost anything with them, they’re full of potential—they represented what Hack Days was all about.
To help build excitement around Hack Days, we applied the brand to special Hack Days beer cans, coasters, posters, stickers, and enamel pins. I even had a custom trophy made. It was CNC machined blocks floating and spinning on top of one another using recessed magnets. It would reside at Shopify HQ for all to see, and winning projects would have their names engraved forevermore.
All the marketing and brand applications!
Results
With the new app and hype leading up to the event, we saw a ~33% increase in participation at the following Hack Days. Huzzah! The App was a big win, it lay the groundwork for us to start tweaking the rest of the program.
The Hack Days trophy — take it for a spin!
Read my next case study:
