A Chaotic Start

The hackathon kicked off with a flood of challenges and problem statements. Our first task? Figuring out where we had the best shot. After some debate, we landed on Mastercard’s challenge: promoting cashless payments and sustainable local tourism.

With our challenge set, we jumped straight into action—interviewing Mastercard’s representatives to uncover the real problem while running intense brainstorming sessions. And by "intense," I mean chaotic. Ideas were flying, discussions spiraled, and somehow, eight hours in, we were right where we started. No plan, no direction—just a lot of sticky notes and confusion.

A Burger to Change It All

So, how did we break out of our creative mess? We got a burger.
We stepped outside into the freezing cold, stood in line for an hour, and let our brains breathe. And then it hit us—hard. We said, "Screw it. Let’s go all in on sustainability."

Sustainability was technically a side quest in the hackathon, with a small extra prize for the most eco-friendly solution. Were we giving up on the big win? Maybe. But at that point, we just wanted to build something we actually believed in. And that changed everything.

Sleep is for the Weak

With a fresh vision, my design partner and I fired up Figma and started building—fast. No pixel-perfect details, no unnecessary features. The only goal? Make it look good enough to win over the jury in the final pitch.

As the night went on (and way too many Red Bulls in), exhaustion started to hit. Our pace slowed to a crawl, and at some point, we had to give in—a quick 4-hour recharge before the final stretch.

Pitch = Theatre

While my design partner and I were deep in Figma, the rest of the team focused on the final pitch. And we had something special planned—a sort of theater play.
 

It’s a trick we’ve used in previous hackathons: instead of just explaining our concept, we act it out on stage. A live demo of a typical user journey, with us as the "actors" and our app interactions playing as a video in the background. Why explain something in words when you can show it in action?