Music Hack Days were at their peak from 2010 - 2015, and they were the best way to learn from engineers hacking on music experiences. From Barcelona to Boston, I went to so many there are years of my life that are a blur. I’d leave my demanding start-up job to go design as fast as I could all weekend and be back at work on Monday. It wasn’t as common for designers to attend these, I deliberately put myself in a space normally for engineers so I could learn.

 

Thanks to the engineers I collaborated with, a lot of these hacks are still online, so you can try to play a piano of owl hoots, see what drink to pair with the music you’re listening to or what an artist’s best A and B side is.

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The most ridiculous hack, Drinkify, was on the Reddit homepage 2x, had 80M page views, and won an MTV O award. 🤷‍♀️