2024–25 Challenge Phases

This year’s Nittany AI Challenge consists of four phases:

Phase 1: Preparation and Customer Discovery
Phase 2: Prototype Design and Presentation
Phase 3: MVP Development
Phase 4: Pitch Contest

Overview

The Challenge begins with ideation sessions and workshops, helping individuals brainstorm ideas, build valuable skills, and form teams.

The workshops are designed to help you build the skills and understanding that will not only help you to compete in the Challenge but will prepare you for internships and full-time employment. You will be building skills that companies value.

You will gain an understanding of what it takes to create a prototype and minimal viable product (MVP) while learning the importance of knowing your customer and their needs. Equally important, you will develop soft skills related to teamwork, customer discovery, and pitching an idea. These skills are highly valued in the marketplace.

The Challenge culminates with selected teams making pitches to a panel of reviewers composed of faculty, staff, and industry and subject matter experts. AI for Good solutions in the Challenge must support the effort to make the world a better place in the areas of education, the environment, agriculture, health, or humanitarianism.

Phase 1: Preparation and Customer Discovery

The preparation phase involves understanding the tools you can use, selecting an idea with social impact, and building a team that has the skills needed for success.

Teams will identify and empathize with their customer, detail the problem the customer is facing, and how the proposed solution (prototype/MVP) will address that problem. An intimate understanding of your customer, the problem they face, and the impact of addressing that problem will put you on the path to success.

Phase 2: Prototype Design and Presentation

The entry to the Challenge will be a prototype. With the advent of LLMs, it is our expectation that prototypes can be created much more efficiently than in past competitions. As a result, rapid prototyping will be one of the key factors of success, assuming you have done your due diligence and understand the problem or opportunity you are addressing, along with its impact and feasibility.

Each team will enter the Challenge by submitting a video that demonstrates the team’s prototype in action, along with supporting documentation. The prototype phase does not require your team to submit code, only documentation and a video that accurately conveys the key components of your solution.

Phase 3: Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Participation in the minimum viable product (MVP) phase is by judge selection and invitation only. The MVP phase will conclude with the development and submission of a minimum viable product (MVP) based on the original proposed solution.

While the prototype is about experimentation and iteration on ideas, focusing on form and user experience, an MVP is about delivering minimum user functionality to your customer to validate the business idea and gather real user feedback for future development.

At the conclusion of this phase, each team will submit their code by the published deadline and will provide a 15-minute, in-person demonstration of their MVP functionality during that same week. Based on this information, a subset of the MVP phase teams will be selected to enter the pitch contest.

Phase 4: Pitch Contest

The pitch contest is the culminating event of the Nittany AI Challenge, where selected teams will have the opportunity to present their MVPs and demonstrate their journey from ideation to a viable product.

To help teams prepare, the Nittany AI Student Society will organize pitch contest workshops conducted by students that have won the Challenge in previous years. Additionally, there will be time set aside in the venue where the pitch contest is to be held to enable teams to practice their pitch in front of Nittany AI Alliance and Student Society representatives. Expect to receive feedback on how you might improve your presentation.

The pitch contest is not only a competition but also a celebration of innovation, creativity, and the potential of AI to address pressing social issues.

This final phase brings together the knowledge, skills, and hard work of all participants, showcasing their ability to create impactful AI solutions.