The day · Page 31
The day, hour by hour
[GIVE THIS TO THE ROOM · print it big, tape it to the wall]
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 9:00 | ☕ Doors open. Coffee, setup, introductions |
| 9:15 | 🎯 The brief. Challenge shared, quick Q&A, teams formed |
| 9:30 - 15:30 | 🧑💻 Build. Six hours heads down with AI tools. Facilitator roams |
| 15:30 - 16:00 | 🧪 User testing. Real users, recruited in advance. Pitch prep in parallel |
| 16:00 - 16:40 | 🎙 Pitches. Every team, ten minutes each. No exceptions |
| 16:40 - 16:50 | 🧑⚖️ Judges deliberate |
| 16:50 - 17:00 | 🏆 Winner announced. Decision made. Next steps agreed |
For you only
The times are exact on purpose. A schedule with round numbers and visible minutes is a promise the room can hold you to, and a facilitator who keeps the first three timeboxes honestly gets the rest of the day's obedience for free.
Three notes on reading the table. The build is six unbroken hours; lunch lands in the room around 12:30 and the clock does not stop for it. The testing window doubles as pitch prep: in each pair, one person runs users through the prototype while the other shapes the pitch, then they swap notes (Chapter 23). And the sponsor arrives at 16:00, not 9:00. One hour is an easy yes.
There is also a second way to slice the six build hours, where everyone starts alone and the teams converge at noon. That is the parallel build, Chapter 21, and it moves nothing outside the build window.
If one day feels too tight for proper testing, split it. Build on day one. Spend most of day two testing, then judge and decide. Two days, same shape. The two-day version buys longer, calmer user sessions and a rested room for pitching. It costs a second day of calendars and some of the pressure that makes the format work. My default is one day. My advice the first time you feel torn: run the one-day version, and let the day itself tell you whether your company needs the second day next time.