Terrible Ideas Hackathon Wrap Up: the best worst ideas we’ve ever seen
Last weekend, we held a two-day Terrible Ideas Hackathon at the MCIC, with 110 participants showing off their brilliantly awful ideas.
As we all know, terrible Ideas happen everywhere, at any time. The Hackathon posed a challenge to innovators, creators, and curious entrepreneurs to create the most terrible, awful, brilliant ideas that they could think of. The Hackathon was an opportunity to close out the year with fun, humour, and creativity.
The Terrible Ideas Hackathon started in New Zealand (and has now successfully run three times), and UNSW Founders held the Sydney based event.
Teams working on physical products were given access to the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre Makerspace, where they could use a laser cutter, bandsaws, sanders, drills, hand-tools, soldering stations, 3D printers, and more!
Lasting for 46 hours, we saw 13 teams with ideas including a plant that screams at you when it wants light or water, a ‘merciful’ mirror that could answer questions about your appearance with potentially brutal honesty, and a machine that destroys your phone with a hammer if you look at it while you’re meant to be studying.
There were 6 fun awards up for grabs including the Shut Up and Take My Money and Mind Blower awards. But the ultimate Truly Terrible award went to Girlfriend Translator!
Girlfriend Translator is a satirical commentary on sexism which uses an AI-powered chat-bot to offer ‘helpful’ relationship advice and could spray your girlfriend with water if things got too heated! What a way to cool down from an argument... A member of this team is now moving on to bring good ideas to life by participating in our UNSW Startup Year bootcamp.
The Terrible Ideas Hackathon Winners:
Shut Up and Take My Money Award
Screaming Plants – Plants deserve better in this life and to be heard. This device makes the plant scream at you when it needs sunshine or water.
Circuit Breaker Award
PVP Snake Game - A 2 player snake game on a custom LED matrix where players must eat food but avoid the poop.
Mind Blower Award
Goku’s Eye – Computer vision augmented reality heads-up-display for detecting people’s power levels. Pick a fork and your power level goes up! Point the scanner at the guy in armour and his power level is over 9000.
Code Nerd Award
Merciful Mirror - Answers the question “Does this dress make me look fat?” by using a webcam, voice recognition and AI analysis! The Merciful Mirror will deliver the truth to you, and more.
Terrible Artist Award
Ryan Gosling Subscription - A website that lets you subscribe to Ryan Gosling - be warned! If you want to unsubscribe, you will have to face a number of challenges!
Truly Terrible Award
Girlfriend Translator - A satirical commentary on sexism which uses an AI-powered chat-bot to offer ‘helpful’ relationship advice and could spray your girlfriend with water if things got too heated! What a way to cool down from an argument.
All ideas were working functional prototypes made in 46 hours!
Congratulations to each team on their truly awful ideas. For more about the International Terrible Ideas Hackathon, visit https://terriblehack.com/
Do you have a not-so-terrible innovation or startup that you’d like to grow in 2024? Expressions of Interest are now open for our Pre-Accelerator and 10x Accelerator Programs. Follow the links below to find out more: