Designing with Developers, Winning at Hackathons
All four happened at UC Davis, and each was the same basic challenge: make something real out of a raw idea in 24 to 36 hours, usually with people I'd just met.
My part was never the code. I worked out what we were making and who it was for. From there I designed the interface and put together the pitch we'd give to judges and sponsors. Three of the four teams won something: Best AI Hack and Best Use of Neurelo at SFHacks 2024, Best Local Hack at SacHacks V, and Best TreeDavis Hack at HackDavis 2023. That tells me the design and the framing held up under pressure.
My role: concept, UX, and the pitch
In practice that meant figuring out the problem and the audience early, then creating the wireframes and prototypes in Figma. At the end I wrote and delivered the demo. The developers built the product; my job was to give them a clear, buildable design to work from and to make sure we could explain it well when time ran out.
Storycraft: an AI storybook for kids
A choose-your-own-adventure where a child invents a hero, drops them into a world, and steers the story scene by scene, with parents as collaborators and the text and artwork generating as they go.
I owned the concept and the experience design. We sketched the flow on paper first, and then I moved it into Figma and designed the layouts and visual language. I kept the design typography-led, borrowing from the way children's books pair words and pictures and from the symbolism of tarot cards, so each story's content stayed front and center instead of competing with the interface.
This project taught me the most about feasibility. How much an element matters to the design has nothing to do with how hard it is to build, and a lot of my time went into checking with the developers about what was realistic and reshaping the design to fit a kind of AI build none of us had attempted before. We finished with a working prototype, and it won both categories it was entered in.
HackerMatch, TreeDatalize, and WattNow
HackerMatch (SacHacks V, Best Local Hack) pairs up hackathon participants with complementary skills, so putting a team together doesn't come down to luck. I came up with the concept and designed the screens for finding and matching teammates. The team built it in Next.js, TypeScript, and Firebase.
TreeDatalize (HackDavis 2023, Best TreeDavis Hack) lays out the City of Davis's urban-forestry data in two interactive visualizations: one for the economic case for planting a given species, and one for how a tree's size relates to the electricity it saves through shade. I shaped the concept with our contact at TreeDavis and designed how the numbers would read on screen. The team built it in Python with Dash and Plotly, and we put the whole thing together in 24 hours as a group of strangers.
WattNow (HackDavis 2025) helps people get rid of old electronics responsibly and pass usable devices on to someone who needs them. I worked on the concept and the UI/UX and made the presentation materials. This one didn't place, and the honest story is about the team. We started with too broad a scope, made the hard call to split up and narrow what we were doing, and still got a functional prototype out the door. I learned as much there about compromise and communication as I did about design.
What I took from working this fast
Designing on a 36-hour clock got me comfortable making fast calls and letting go of the parts we couldn't build in time. What I took most from working next to developers is how much it helps to hand them something they can actually build, and to be the one who can explain it. Winning three of the four felt good. The part that stuck with me is that I can walk into an unsolved problem with the clock already running and find my footing.