Embedded Files
Jury
Timeline
June - November 2025
Collaborators
2 Product Directors, 3 Engineers
Role
Lead Designer, Lead Researcher
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Claude Code
Jury is an all-in-one hackathon judging platform that allows judges to compare and score projects as they walk around a venue.
SUMMARY
I redesigned the industry standard for hackathon judging
Working with HackUTD to create Jury, I was responsible for designing a product that improved upon the judging platform they used at the time. In doing so, I achieved:
01 Learning
Experimented with the new Claude Code tool to explore creating functional products with limited coding capacity
02 Designing
Directed the research and design process to bring the product from concepts to fully launched
03 Collaborating
Ensured that the vibe-coded product was grounded in reality through consistent communication with the developers
BASELINE
Gavel is a product that works, but it could be so much better
Gavel was developed by HackMIT in 2015 and serves as the standard for hackathon judging
Since its creation, it has seen relatively few quality-of-life updates, leading to increased frustration over the years
Developers at HackUTD had a plan to develop an alternative to Gavel, addressing its pain points and sharing the product with organizations across the country
How might we innovate upon something everyone uses?
USER RESEARCH
To understand where we could improve upon Gavel, I needed to talk to people who had plenty of experience using it
By conducting user interviews with 17 hackathon organizers across the US and Canada, I was able to find the following:
01 Controversial Winners
The pairwise comparisons used in Gavel don't offer any other way to capture judge sentiment, leading to winners that were good, not great
02 Judging Confusion
Judges would stand at tables for far too long, reducing the number of projects they saw. They would also forget which project was which
03 Lack of Admin Control
Admins would be swamped with problems from hackers and judges when judging started, with limited options at their disposal
A NEW TOOL
I tried out Claude Code to test out my designs in a new way
Throughout my designing, I recreated my prototypes with Claude Code to get a better idea of how they felt when actually running. I'd share these with the developers to get feedback on how I could produce code that would help them down the line.
SOLUTIONS
Selectively adding features addressed the bulk of the concerns
Given that Jury was going to be built from scratch with a hard deadline at the time of the next HackUTD, I knew that my solutions had to be effective but realistic.
Judges
Created a countdown timer to limit presentation lengths and to speed up judge interactions
Provided a space within the app for judges to take notes on each project
Added a manual ranking system to distinguish notable projects from the rest
Implemented a starring system to signify potential winners throughout judging
Admin
Added a way for admins to temporarily pause all judging in case of an emergency
Provided support for multiple project tracks and challenges in a single event
Not Shown:
Created an allowance for judges in charge of a specific track to only see projects in that track
Added a way for admins to disable all logins in the event of a cyber attack
DEVELOPMENT
A direct line of communication with devs was essential
As I handed off parts of the app to be developed, frequent meetings with the engineering team and the product directors were vital to making something that functions for the organizing team.
It was a new experience to design a product that would be developed by the same people using it, but this allowed for extremely open communication about what would work and what wouldn't.
RESULTS
Jury made judges happier and is being adopted nationally
The HackUTD team saw a significant increase in their judge satisfaction scores in the first year they implemented Jury. The platform has since been adopted by 5+ other hackathon organizing teams across the country, and members of the developer team have been invited to speak about Jury at an international hackathon conference called HackCon.
LEARNINGS
This project taught me how to adapt to this new landscape
New tools are always coming out, and it is up to individuals to learn how to implement them into their workflows and utilize them to create better user experiences.
The use of AI in this field is not about reducing the amount of thought and effort required in a project. It is about enabling designers to think through and experiment with new ideas without the associated development costs.
When something is seen as an industry standard, it can be daunting to imagine how we can improve it. All it takes is the willingness to try and a desire to create something better.
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