Overview
Basket addresses campus food waste and student financial stress through blockchain-enabled peer exchange. The platform uses VET tokens to reduce money anxiety around small transactions and automates receipt scanning to prevent spoilage through smart calendar reminders.
Problem
Boston Consulting Group and VeChain set "food waste" as the hackathon theme. We scoped to college campuses—a context we knew intimately.
I conducted rapid interviews with students in our dorm to surface food waste patterns.
Key insights emerged: buying in bulk without realistic consumption plans, forgetting about perishables, and hesitation to ask peers for help with excess food.
Design Decisions
Within the 24-hour constraint, I prioritized UX trust. Privacy concerns were conceptually addressed through local receipt parsing. Pending states maintained system transparency. OCR accuracy was flagged—users would eventually need editing controls for extracted items.
Future Directions
Editable OCR workflows would let users review and correct receipt extractions before posting. A native mobile app would enable in-context scanning, push notifications, and location-based food sharing.
Reflections
I translated technical constraints between developers and non-technical stakeholders, aligning priorities so the team could move quickly. We built trust under pressure, delivered a cohesive concept, and won both a cash prize and a $30,000 pre-seed investment offer from VeChain.