As technology advances, customer expectations are moving even faster. To address this shift, Chulalongkorn School of Integrated Innovation (CSII), in collaboration with IT CITY Public Company Limited, organized the IT CITY Hackathon 2025 - bringing together emerging talent to explore the future of customer experience in Thailand’s IT retail industry.
As a result, the initiative brought together academic talent, industry leaders, and real consumers around a shared challenge: reimagining how compact IT retail spaces can deliver meaningful, differentiated experiences in an increasingly competitive market.
A Hackathon Designed at National Scale
The IT CITY Hackathon 2025 was developed as a flagship collaboration between academia and industry, going beyond conventional student competitions in both scale and ambition.
After a highly competitive selection process, six finalist teams were chosen to advance through multiple stages of refinement, mentorship, and real-world validation - culminating in a final presentation to IT CITY executives at the company’s headquarters.
Notably, BAScii students featured prominently across the finalist teams and secured all top three positions in the competition. IT’s Gonna Be OK (Natchanon L., Woraphan P., Natsinee B., Nathathida T., Nannapat J.) claimed the championship title, followed by Lorngruay (Alantum T., Thanyaporn P., Pakaphol J., Manithip M., Thitarat P.) as First Runner-Up, and Seed (Krittin W., Bunyasit F., Neeranuch C., Theethita S., Saruttaya T.) as Second Runner-Up. Given that, the results reflected the program’s emphasis on experiential learning, teamwork, and translating insights into practical, experience-driven solutions.
Real Customers, Real Insights, Real Impact
One of the defining moments of the competition was the live customer engagement phase at COMMART Thailand, held at BITEC Bangna — one of the country’s largest technology trade exhibitions.
During this dedicated interactive booth experience, finalist teams engaged directly with over 1,000 unique visitors, collecting firsthand feedback, opinions, and behavioral insights from real IT consumers. This large-scale interaction ensured that proposed solutions were not hypothetical, but grounded in actual customer expectations and experiences.
The insights gathered during this phase played a critical role in shaping the final solutions, reinforcing the competition’s focus on experience-led innovation informed by real users.
Where Ideas Meet Decision-Makers
Finally the competition concluded with a Final Pitch at IT CITY Headquarters, where teams presented refined, insight-driven solutions directly to senior executives and academic judges.
The final evaluation emphasized clarity of insight, strength of customer experience differentiation, feasibility within real retail environments, and the ability to communicate ideas at an executive level - reflecting real-world business decision-making standards.
Strengthening Innovation Through Collaboration
The IT CITY Hackathon 2025 highlights the power of collaboration between industry and academia in driving meaningful innovation. By combining academic rigor with real customer engagement and executive evaluation, the program created a platform where ideas could move beyond concepts toward practical, experience-driven solutions.
Overall, for CSII, the competition reinforces its commitment to creating learning environments that connect students with real challenges, real stakeholders, and real impact. In a landscape where technology evolves rapidly and customer expectations move even faster, initiatives like the IT CITY Hackathon 2025 play a vital role in preparing students to design solutions that truly matter.
