What happens when you give brilliant people powerful AI tools and complete creative freedom?
As part of our Summer Get-Together (which we covered in detail in our previous post), we tasked our people with an ambitious challenge: build something real using AI. This hackathon became the perfect testing ground for our "AI Powered @ MMT" initiative. Teams could leverage our existing expertise with tools like Claude and GitHub Copilot, pushing these technologies to their limits and showcasing the full potential of human-AI collaboration.
Our vision? Let teams explore how AI tools can enhance daily work and amplify what we're already great at.
We came up with an intentionally intense format: six cross-functional teams had just three hours to select an idea, research and develop the solution, build a product roadmap, develop compelling visuals, create a Proof of Concept, and deliver a 10-minute presentation. All designed to challenge our people to find the perfect collaborative rhythm between human insight and artificial capability under some serious time pressure.
When the three hours were up, we evaluated teams across five categories: best use of AI, best product, best presentation, best teamwork, and grand champion.
The outcome? Six presentations that ranged from polished product demos to passionate pitches held together with determination and creative flair. What they all shared was that unmistakable energy of teams who'd surprised themselves with what they could build – and who were already imagining what they could tackle next.
We got our answer to that opening question: when you give brilliant people powerful AI tools and complete creative freedom, they don't just build products. They discover new ways to think, work, and solve problems together.
The Tinder-Inspired Travel Revolution
When two teams independently chose to reimagine holiday planning with swipe-based discovery.
It's fascinating when great minds think alike. Two separate teams identified the same core problem and reached for the same solution: bringing the addictive simplicity of Tinder's swipe mechanics to travel planning. Both teams understood that holiday planning had become unnecessarily complicated, and both saw an opportunity to make it as engaging as the trips themselves.
Swipe to Paradise: The Group Trip Solution
Holiday planning should be as fun as the holiday itself, but anyone who's tried coordinating a group trip knows the reality: endless WhatsApp threads, conflicting preferences, and the stress of trying to please everyone. Swipe to Paradise tackled this problem with a brilliantly simple solution.
Their approach starts with AI-powered natural language processing. Instead of filling out forms, you simply describe what you're looking for: "beach holiday with great food and nightlife" or "cultural city break with museums and cafes." The AI interprets your prompt and builds a personalised discovery stack of activities, restaurants, and experiences.
Then comes the signature feature: Tinder-style swiping through curated options. Each swipe teaches the algorithm your preferences, building toward a complete itinerary that actually reflects what you want to do.
New Adventures: tackling decision paralysis
New Adventures tackled the same swiping concept but brought a different perspective to the problem. They identified what they called the holiday market's core issues: decision paralysis and the £50-100 billion in abandoned bookings plaguing the industry.
They created beautiful Instagram-style interfaces that help users "feel the holiday before it begins," promising to get exhausted workers from Friday evening stress to "virtually standing on a beach in Portugal" in five minutes. New Adventures claimed Best Use of AI for their comprehensive integration across market research, branding, video generation with voiceovers, and full-stack development.
Travel-Able: Travel for Everyone
The accessibility-first travel companion built with dignity and inclusion at its core.
For 1.3 billion people worldwide, the hardest part of travel isn't choosing a destination; it's navigating the unseen challenges that others take for granted. Travel-Able reimagined travel planning for people with disabilities, building accessibility into every interaction rather than bolting it on as an afterthought.
The team's vision was clear: "Freedom to explore your way, because everyone deserves to feel and experience the world." Their working prototype demonstrated multimodal interfaces with voice synthesis, visual responses, and quick action buttons. Users could type or speak accessibility requests, get geo-located recommendations for accessible hotels and transport, and access conversation history with playback functionality.
Their co-creation with lived experience approach stood out particularly. Instead of making assumptions about what people with disabilities need, they built a framework for listening, learning, and evolving based on feedback from the communities they serve. This ensured every experience feels authentic and grounded in real needs rather than theoretical accessibility standards.
Travel-Able won Best Teamwork after facing constant disruption, repeatedly getting moved out of rooms yet maintaining focus and collaborative spirit. Despite the chaos, every team member contributed meaningfully while adapting to new spaces, delivering a comprehensive prototype and detailed 12-month roadmap.
Ember: The Health Revolution
The AI companion that addresses why 80% of people quit exercise programmes within six months.
Ember tackled a £8.1 billion market with a brutal retention problem. While fitness apps focus on features, Ember focuses on behaviour change, using AI to provide continuous motivation during the critical "ramp period" where most people quit.
The team's research revealed the core issue: traditional fitness solutions fail at the psychological level. Their solution? An AI-powered health companion that meets you where you are emotionally, not where you "should" be physically.
The six-phase conversational onboarding matches users with personalised AI trainer personalities, providing 24/7 behavioural support with predictive intervention when dropout risk is detected. The team delivered comprehensive market analysis and detailed financial projections, demonstrating how AI can accelerate business thinking without losing strategic depth.
Uncharted: Adventures for the Bold
The risk-based platform for travellers who'd rather dodge a protest than another tourist.
While others plan safe holidays they'll forget by February, Uncharted serves adventurous souls seeking stories worth telling. Their platform gamifies risk assessment through an intuitive interface where users set their "trouble level" (1-10), comfort thresholds ("I'll sleep in a Soviet-era apartment block"), and cultural shock preferences ("I want to question everything I believe"). Users get destinations like Transnistria ("the country that doesn't exist") or Albanian Alps ("mountains that make Switzerland look suburban"), complete with honest risk assessments and local insights.
Trippin': The Grand Champion
The mood-first travel companion that reads how you feel, not just where you want to go.
While most travel apps ask "Where do you want to go?", Trippin' starts with "How do you want to feel?" This intelligent travel app matches your mood to the perfect destination, then adapts in real-time when plans inevitably change.
The concept centres on their "Adaptive Vibes Engine™", a branded system that adjusts recommendations based on mood check-ins, weather disruptions, and unexpected changes. Stuck in Barcelona with a cancelled friend and a sudden storm? Trippin' doesn't just suggest alternatives; it understands you're now on a solo trip with a completely different energy need.
The team built three distinct user personas: the Simplicity Seeker (wanting stress-free clarity), the Social Capital Seeker (chasing Instagram-worthy moments), and the Wanderlust Traveller (guided by emotion and flexibility). Each gets personalised experiences through social media integration, visual-first interfaces, and mood-responsive AI.
The team demonstrated perfect human-AI collaboration: letting Claude generate competitor analysis and HTML prototypes while applying human intelligence to interpret market gaps and design emotionally resonant experiences. Their presentation was polished because AI handled the execution speed, freeing them to focus on storytelling and strategic thinking.
Why Trippin' won the grand championship:
Trippin' swept three major categories: Best Product, Best Presentation, and Grand Champion. While other teams excelled in specific areas, Trippin' delivered uniformly strong execution from working demo through competitor analysis, detailed user personas, and visual roadmap. Their Adaptive Vibes Engine wasn't just a clever name; they'd actually built the interface. Their presentation demonstrated impressive cohesion for such a tight timeframe: clear problem articulation, compelling demo, and commercial awareness all working together. Most tellingly, judges felt Trippin' was 'closest to a real product' with genuine AI integration throughout.
This wasn't just a hackathon, it was MMT at its best.
Three hours wasn't enough time to build the perfect product, but that was never the point. What mattered was watching talented people experiment and create together when given complete freedom.
The teams that succeeded leveraged AI tools strategically to focus their creative energy on the problems that matter most. Because when technology serves human insight rather than replacing it, remarkable things become possible. We had an incredible time. Built things that actually surprised us. Got to collaborate in ways that reminded us why we love what we do. And walked away buzzing with ideas we're still talking about.
This is what forward-thinking organisations need: people who understand both human psychology and AI capability, working together to build experiences that genuinely improve lives.
Inspired by what's possible when brilliant people meet powerful tools? We'd love to explore what we could build together.
