DubHacks
Hacker Profile
ROLE
UX Designer
Team
Medha Rawat
Ariana Cao
Annie Chang
TIMELINE
3 months · 2025
OVERVIEW
Student Hackathon Hub Platform
DubHacks is the Pacific Northwest's largest hackathon, hosted at the University of Washington. At DubHacks 2024, hackers relied on a mix of Notion pages, Discord channels, and flagging down staff in pink shirts just to find basic information or redeem DubCoins.
With over 1,200 participants, this meant long lines, repeated questions, and a lot of chaos.
So we asked:
What if there was one place for everything?
jump to final design
CONTEXT
A name badge and a Notion Page.
That’s basically what hackers had.
Every year, hundreds of students show up to DubHacks excited to build something meaningful. But once they arrive, things can quickly get confusing and intimidating.
Information lives in Notion
Need help? Find someone in a pink shirt or ask in Discord
DubCoins? Ask a staff member
It works… but barely. Hackers are constantly switching between platforms, and staff are constantly getting interrupted. At scale, it becomes overwhelming—for everyone.
Imagine this
You just got into your first hackathon.
You show up, get your badge, and immediately think:
“Wait… where do I go?”
“Is there a schedule somewhere?"
"What should I start with?"
To get your questions answered, choose one of the following:
Now multiply that by 1,200 people.
That's a lot, isn't it?
DISCOVERY
HOW MIGHT WE
How might we help hackers feel seen, find their people, and carry their hackathon identity beyond the weekend?
We got lucky
In terms of guides and resources for hackers to find information. There was a hacker guide (Notion). There was a Discord. So technically… everything existed.
But it wasn’t working. Then we dug a little deeper—and found something interesting. In the DubHacks 2022 archives, there was an early concept for a hacker profile system.
Home Page
Middle: Largest information - General information with hours left to hack, tracks, and challenges
Left: Meet a hacker, find a mentor sections
Right: Upcoming, which includes logisitcal items, including tasks, and schedule
Small CTA for finding a team
Designed desktop-first
Color scheme
Color Scheme
The visual design was based on the DubHacks 2022 theme.
Find a Team Page
Allowed hackers to both search for teams, view individual team information, request to join teams, and manage teams.
Mobile Design
The 2022 wireframes also included mobile responsive designs.
The DubHacks 2022 proposal for a Hacker Profile, never deployed.
We got lucky
It was never shipped. But it had potential.
However, the early concept focused mainly on team building, where as the main pain point for DubHacks 2024 was unorganized time. Instead of starting from scratch, we decided to build on this idea—this time, grounded in actual user pain.
Our Research Approach
Hacker Surveys
Distributed post-event surveys to capture pain points around team formation and the overall hackathon experience at scale.
Stakeholder Interviews
Met previous hackers at DH '25 tabling events, and got the chance to interview them.
Spoke with organizers, mentors, and sponsors to understand what information matters most when interacting with hackers.
Competitive Analysis
Evaluated Devpost, MLH, and Devfolio profiles to identify gaps in how hackers represent themselves on existing platforms.
We found these insights...
What we uncovered
01
Information was scattered
Notion, Discord, staff… no single source of truth
Hackers didn’t know where to look
02
Staff were overwhelmed
Constantly being flagged down
Answering the same questions repeatedly
Balancing logistics + support
03
DubCoins created friction
Hackers didn’t know how many they had
Didn’t know where to redeem
Long lines formed during peak moments
04
Team formation was a large source of anxiety
Just like in the DH22 early conceptual wireframes, team formation remained a large anxiety for hackers
Team formation events wouldn't fit in all schedules
@hacker_anon · DubHacks Slack
"I showed up solo and spent the first 2 hours just walking around asking people what they knew. Felt like a job fair with no resumes."
@first_time_hacker · Post-event survey
"I wish I could've seen people's skills beforehand. I ended up on a team where everyone was a frontend dev and nobody could touch the backend."
What next?
01
Information was scattered
Notion, Discord, staff… no single source of truth
Hackers didn’t know where to look
Decision: Create a centralized hub where everything lives in one place, so hackers don't have to switch between spaces constantly. Perhaps include a quiz for FAQs before hackers can activate.
02
Staff were overwhelmed
Constantly being flagged down
Answering the same questions repeatedly
Balancing logistics + support
Decision: Design automated DubCoin system, reducing reliance on staff, and speeding up process, reducing lines.
03
DubCoins created friction
Hackers didn’t know how many they had
Didn’t know where to redeem
Long lines formed during peak moments
Decision: Make DubCoins visible, trackable, and easy to redeem. Create unique hacker ID's or QR codes for staff to scan to speed up DubCoin redemption.
04
Team formation was a large source of anxiety
Just like in the DH22 early conceptual wireframes, team formation remained a large anxiety for hackers
Team formation events wouldn't fit in all schedules
Decision: Use profiles to surface identity, skills, and presence and keep team formation and finding aspect from '22 concept, but keep it a secondary action.
GOALS
Three north stars for the profile.
01
Self-expression
Give hackers a rich, personal space to share who they are — skills, interests, links, bio — so they feel represented, not reduced to a name tag.
02
Connection
Surface profiles at the right moments — during team formation, networking, and event activities — to make finding the right people effortless.
03
Continuity
Create a persistent identity that grows with each DubHacks event. Your profile should reflect your journey, not reset every year.
PROCESS
From sticky notes to shipped screens.
We started with rapid sketching sessions, exploring different mental models for how a hacker's identity could live within the platform. Early ideas ranged from a LinkedIn-style profile to a more playful "trading card" concept. We quickly realized the profile couldn't just be a static page — it needed to be woven into every touchpoint: the leaderboard, team formation, the schedule, even the DubCoins store.
Our first high-fidelity attempt tried to pack everything onto one screen — bio, skills, schedule, DubCoins balance, team info. User testing revealed it felt overwhelming. Participants said it looked "like a dashboard, not a person." That feedback was the turning point.
We pivoted to a layered approach: a warm, visually-led profile header (banner + avatar + key details) with content organized into clear, scannable sections below. The pink banner became a signature element — tying the profile back to DubHacks' energetic brand identity.
Left: landing page for dashboard. Center: DubCoin "store". Right: leaderboard to encourage engagement
DESIGN DECISIONS
Three choices that shaped the profile.
01
The pink banner — brand as belonging
Research showed hackers wanted to feel like part of something bigger. By anchoring every profile with DubHacks' signature pink, we turned a utilitarian page into a badge of membership. The banner wasn't just decoration — it signaled "you're one of us."
02
Skills as tags, not text — enabling scannable matching
During team formation, hackers needed to assess potential teammates at a glance. Rendering skills as color-coded tags (vs. a paragraph or list) let users compare capabilities instantly without committing to a deep read. This directly addressed the #1 pain point from our survey.
03
Micro-copy that speaks human — not platform
Working closely with the content team, we rewrote every label and prompt. "Enter your biography" became "Tell us about you." "Select technical competencies" became "What do you build with?" Small shifts that made onboarding feel like a conversation, not a form — and reduced profile abandonment during setup.
03
Micro-copy that speaks human — not platform
Working closely with the content team, we rewrote every label and prompt. "Enter your biography" became "Tell us about you." "Select technical competencies" became "What do you build with?" Small shifts that made onboarding feel like a conversation, not a form — and reduced profile abandonment during setup.
FINAL DESIGN
The Hacker Profile, in full.
A personalized identity layer that lives across the entire DubHacks platform — from registration through the event and beyond.
Profile Header & Identity
A warm, brand-forward header featuring the hacker's avatar, name, school, graduation year, and social links — all at a glance. The pink banner creates instant visual belonging.
Skills & Interests Grid
Categorized, tag-based skills let teammates quickly assess compatibility. Interest tags surface shared passions — because great teams are built on more than tech stacks.
DubCoins & Engagement
Profiles showcase each hacker's DubCoins balance and activity — earned through attending workshops, helping peers, and completing challenges. Gamification that rewards participation, not just output.
Team Formation Integration
During the 'Connect' phase, profiles are surfaced as cards — filterable by skill, interest, and availability. Users said finding teammates went from 'awkward speed-dating' to 'browsing people you'd actually want to work with.'
IMPACT
What changed.
Although formal metrics are still being collected, the impact was immediately noticeable.
Hackers used the profile as a go-to hub during the event, especially for checking DubCoins and navigating information.
Organizers saw fewer repeated questions and interruptions, allowing them to focus on running the event instead of constantly troubleshooting.
What started as a tool for organization became something more—
a system that made the hackathon feel more structured, accessible, and interactive.
300%
Decrease in DubCoin Distribution Time. Time that staff spent distributing DubCoins went from 3 hours to 1 hour
87%
Hackers used the hacker profile. Most users primarily used the DubCoins.
Fewer questions
From hackers, staff reported. More time was able to go to food runs, technical issues.
NEXT STEPS
Where the profile goes from here.
01
Cross-event persistence
Let profiles carry across DubHacks events and potentially other MLH hackathons — building a portable hacker identity.
02
Richer social features
Add direct messaging, team invitations from profiles, and the ability to endorse skills — turning profiles from pages into relationships.
03
Post-hackathon showcase
After the event, profiles become project portfolios — linking completed projects, photos, and awards to the hacker's identity for future reference.
Hackathons are 24 hours, but the people you meet and the things you build can last a lifetime. This profile is just the beginning of making that real. 💛