Automating the
DubCoin distribution system
ROLE
Product Designer
Team
Medha Rawat
Ariana Cao
Annie Chang
TIMELINE
3 months · 2025
OVERVIEW
Student Hackathon Hub Platform
overview
DubHacks rewards hackers with coins for attending workshops.
Dubcoins are DubHacks' incentive currency. Hackers earn them by attending workshops and redeem them for prizes.
Jump to final design
problem
The Dubcoin distribution system was the biggest pain point of 2024.
Everything ran through a single Excel sheet. Staff manually looked up hackers, edited rows, and verified student IDs — in a packed ballroom, under pressure. Lines stretched around the room. What should've taken minutes took three hours. Staff were overwhelmed.
insights
Staff were being used as the system — instead of a system doing the work.
We walked through last year's flow step by step: staff interviews, debrief notes, and every manual touchpoint.
Manual
Every transaction required a staff member to edit a spreadsheet by hand.
Opaque
Hackers had to remember how many DubCoins they had.
@hacker_anon · DubHacks Slack
"How many Dubcoins do I have?"
Disconnected
Staff had to match a hacker's balance to available prizes manually.
@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."
solution
The Hacker Profile, in full.
The Hacker Profile gives every hacker visibility — and gives staff a one-tap redemption flow.
Personalized Welcome
Greets each hacker by name with their live Dubcoin balance front and center.
Toggle between views
Switch from scanning to redeeming DubCoins.
Scan QR codes
Earn DubCoins by scanning QR codes at workshops.
Personal QR code
Every hacker gets one. Staff scan it at the prize table — no typing, no Excel.
Live earn notifications
Congrats, you just earned 15 Dubcoins from this workshop.
Activity feed
A full log of every event attended and every coin earned.
IMPACT
Staff could focus on hackers, not spreadsheets.
The 2025 distribution ran without the chaos that defined 2024. What took three hours became a scan-and-tap flow.
300%
Decrease in DubCoin Distribution Time.
Zero
Manual Excel edits required.
Fewer questions
From hackers, staff reported.
reflection
Our constraints shaped the design.
We had a whole self-checkout idea that got cut because the tech wasn't there yet. But the thing we built instead — scan, tap, redeem — was cleaner. Sometimes the constraint does the design thinking for you.
NEXT STEPS
Where the DubCoin system goes from here.
01
Collect feedback from hackers.
We shipped it — now we need to hear from the people who used it. What worked, what was confusing, what they actually wanted.
02
Strengthen the staff-side experience.
We focused heavily on the hacker side. The staff flow still needs work — specifically, there's no safeguard if a staff member accidentally taps a redemption. That needs an undo or a confirmation step before it goes any further.
03
Refine the visual design.
The system works. Now we make it feel as good as it functions.