Get the inside scoop from COYTE - the Winning Katalon Hackathon Team!

Ever wondered what it takes to win big at a hackathon? We've got exclusive insights from the stellar Katalon Hackathon-winning team. Let’s together dive deep into their 2-day journey, the challenges they conquered, and the innovative solutions they brought to the table. Get ready to be inspired! 

Q. Where does your team name come from? Tell us about each member's role.

Ha: The concept originated from the desire to develop an AI feature that serves as a partner during the user testing phase. This led to the creation of the term 'Co-testing.' However, the abbreviation 'CO-TE' seemed a bit odd. To bridge this gap, we incorporated a term that resonates with most of our team members, who belong to Gen Y 😉. In our Vietnamese culture, we have a saying, ‘kính lão đắc thọ,’ which inspired us to add the 'Y' in the middle, forming the name 'COYTE.'

Let's meet our team members: @Vu Than - Studio Tech Lead: brain of the group, he's responsible for anything related to technical aspects.

• Philip Becker - Studio Senior PM: face of the group, with his previous experience in the Sales team, and now as a Product Manager, he’s responsible for ‘selling’ our idea to judges.
• Me, Thuy Ngo - Studio PM: market/user representative, I’m in charge of identifying user pain points and assessing business impacts on the team's idea.
• Chien Trang - Studio Engineer: team visibility, the only one who stayed throughout the hackathon as other members were packed with meeting schedules 😂. He contributed to brainstorming ideas and helped with the mockup, and slide deck.
• An Tran - Studio QE Lead: QE representative, he contributed to brainstorming and validating ideas from a QE perspective and helped with the mockup.

Q. Was it surprising that you won? What did you feel when you heard that you were the winner?

Chien: Honestly, I was a little surprised! There were so many innovative ideas at this hackathon. Winning feels amazing, but what I enjoyed most was the collaborative energy and learning from others. It's a true testament to what a group of passionate people: product manager, software engineer, and quality engineer, can achieve.

Q. The Katalon Hackathon is about Thrive with AI, how did you come up with an idea? What your project was all about?

Vu: I see the customer's pain point about creating test cases that take a lot of effort with redundant steps and I wonder how I can improve this situation. When working with AI, providing sufficient contextual information has much impact on the accuracy of results compared to the user’s expectation. Katalon Studio has the advantage of providing an application testing context already over separated AI tools. And we all know that a picture is worth a thousand “tokens” so I think if I can tell AI about the system under test visually it can help provide much better contextual information than textual information for AI to assist the user in generating test cases as requested. In the end, the idea is to provide much contextual information in the way that is most effortlessly possible to AI so we can get the most out of it.

Q. Do you have a big picture of the next steps? How will your team’s solution be applied to innovate Katalon product(s)?

Thuy: Definitely, integrating an AI feature leveraging the capability of GPT-4's vision model into Katalon Studio presents an opportunity to improve test coverage for users in their testing phase. As stated in the Opportunity Canvas, we believe our solution involves essential human involvement to guarantee the quality and precision of outputs, making them immediately beneficial and fitting seamlessly into user workflows.

This minimizes the need for users to expend effort in confirming and checking the AI-generated results. This approach contrasts with other AI-enhanced test automation tools, which predominantly depend on the output from Generative AI without such a level of human oversight.

Q. How did each member's unique skills and perspectives enhance your team's performance and innovation?

Chien: I believe that each team member's unique skill set was instrumental in enhancing our overall performance and fostering innovation. Phillip's strategic outlook and technical insight ensured that our idea was not only aligned with market needs but also technically sound. Chi Thuy Ngo's experience was pivotal in clearly outlining our business approach, making it easier to communicate our vision. Anh Vu Than's vast experience in AI and various industries allowed us to incorporate a cross-disciplinary approach to our idea. Meanwhile, anh An Tran's expertise in automation helped iterate with different ideas before we had the most viable idea, and my ability to materialize ideas into mockups brought our concept to life, making it resonate with the judges. Each unique perspective fused into a cohesive and compelling innovation strategy.

Q. To Philip, how amazing was it that you flew all the way from the US to join forces and your team won the grand prize?

Philip: 10000 out of 10. There were many great things about this trip but this was one of the highlights. 👍

Q. What was the best part / your favorite memory of this hackathon?

An: My favorite memory of this hackathon was the exhilarating feeling of collaboration and innovation that permeated the event. Working alongside incredibly talented teammates, we tackled a challenging problem head-on and pushed ourselves to think outside the box. The energy in the room was contagious as we brainstormed ideas, overcame obstacles, and ultimately built a solution that impressed both the judges and ourselves.