Cybersecurity Behind Cute Design — Tassu Passu, Junction 2019 winner
The main prize of Junction 2019 was taken home by Tulika, Yevhenii, Ronalds and Reinis: a team built on the first day of the hackathon, taking the win with their project built with a diverse skill set, creativity — and not forgetting to have fun with their team. Here is what made this team take home the Main Prize!
Building a winner team
Reinis and Ronalds already knew each other from way back — Ronalds, an experienced hackathoner, was actually the one who first convinced Reinis to his first hackathon, Junction in 2015. Yevhenii had also been to Junction 2018, and for Tulika this was her first Junction experience.
On the first day of Junction 2019, Reinis and Ronalds were looking for people to join them in the team building session. They ended up talking to Tulika and Yevhenii, exchanging ideas on which challenge to pick. The team hit it off right away — and were soon asked to leave the team building session, as they were being too loud — so, they decided to lock in the team.
Complex tech behind a cute design for kids
Reinis and Ronalds had already discussed about picking a challenge related to security, as they had some technologies in mind they wanted to use — but at first skipped the challenge from Ericsson, Security Awareness for Kids.
“We thought, what are we going to do? This technology in cybersecurity is so complex, no kid is going to use it. At first we kept scrolling through the challenges, but after some thinking came back to it: it posed an interesting challenge for us. You take super complex technology, and make it accessible, almost invisible to the user, in this case children.” — Reinis
Yevhenii’s past in working at a kindergarten, and the enthusiasm for the challenge of Reinis and Ronalds inspired Tulika as well, and the team started building Tassu Passu: an application for children to create a secure, memorable password through creating their own storyline — combining cybersecurity with usability and a design that kids will love to use.
Diverse skills behind the win
Building their project, simplicity and accessability on the user’s side were the team’s top focus — the project was being built for kids after all. On the other hand, the security side was far from simple, built based on Bip39, technology typically used to secure cryptocurrency wallets.
“Cryptocurrency is of course valuable — but for a parent their child’s privacy is most valuable” — Tulika
This is where the team with a diverse skill set really got to shine: Tulika focused on the storytelling and wording of the app, Yevhenii on design and user experience, and Reinis and Ronalds on the security side.
“We are all totally different in our education and background. Usually in hackathons there are just very similar people. In this team we were all completely in our own worlds, but it just worked” — Reinis.
“I think the team was such a good match. Everybody was so different, but could contribute in their own way” — Yevhenii.
“That was the best thing about our different backgrounds: we had different perspectives. Sometimes we didn’t agree and had different ideas for the project, but we always respected each other” — Tulika
“The match of the team was just perfect, from the technical side, the design side — all these things just put together” — Ronalds
So, how did they win?
In peer reviewing, the team managed to convince the other participants with their project: the carefully planned presentation, and especially the possibility to test Tassu Passu in real time (try the mobile version at tassupassu.com!) took them on to the Track finals.
“My main focus when I come to a hackathon is that you make something that’s buildable, and the thing that you pitch in the end is as close as possible to what you have really built — so it’s not just slides you’re pitching.” — Ronalds
After their pitch on stage with all Track Winners, team Tassu Passu were voted as the winners of Junction 2019 — Reinis and Ronalds did miss their ferry and flight back home to Latvia because of their celebration. Luckily the Main Prize of 10k€ should cover that, as well as a meeting the team has already planned in Estonia — halfway between Finland and Latvia. 😎
Find the project on the Junction App!
The project Tassu Passu was built to the Junction 2019 challenge of Ericsson — Security Awareness for Kids
“In Ericsson we are building critical communication infrastructure that has a direct or indirect impact on almost everyone on the planet. As a result, we spend a lot of time thinking hard about how to improve security for everyone.
One huge problem in deploying security solutions widely is the combination of security with usability is a big challenge. We wanted to bring in a challenge that can focus on the combination of security and usability in a way that is concrete and easy to relate to for the teams too. This is how we came up with Security for Kids: if you design your security solutions so approachable that even kids can use it, it means a big leap forward in finding solutions usable for everyone.
Tassu Passu is a delightful combination of user interface innovation for a security tool that is widely needed. It is not just for kids either!” — Sini Ruohomaa, Ericsson
