The hackathon didn’t have a specific theme, other than one rule: no AI allowed. One of my teammates already had an idea of making a website where people take pictures of “grass” and upload them to compete with others, encouraging everyone to go outside more. Which didn’t go too far. But as we talked through it, we realized the backend would be nearly impossible to finish in time, especially since the original concept relied on AI to verify whether the grass was real and we really run on a time crunch that no one on my team can’t figure it in time.
After brainstorming for a while, we shifted to a new concept: a social media site where users could “grow” their own virtual garden. Every time someone uploaded a photo, they’d earn a unique flower based on the location where the picture was taken. These flowers would appear in a garden on their profile, and each person’s garden layout would be randomly generated. Friends could compare their gardens and see what unique flowers they collected.
My role on the team was to create all the visual assets. Everything from the website logo to the default profile icon, I had forty‑eight hours to design everything. I started by creating flowers from different countries since we needed to test how the system would generate them based on location. Before I knew it, twenty‑four hours had already passed. I ended up sacrificing sleep to finish ten flower sprites, a default profile icon, and two logo designs. By using an online pixel‑art creator to make all the assets. It makes my job easier and saved me some time.
In the end, everything came together beautifully. Our team won third place, and even though we didn’t take first, the joy we felt was overwhelming. We were literally in tears because of how much effort we poured into this project. It was exhausting, chaotic, and unforgettable and I’m proud of what we created.