The Duckies

Award Nominees

Each category recognizes several nominees. Winners will be revealed at the ceremony.

1. Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Taarush Goswami

Winner — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Turning boredom into plans with AI-powered discovery

An activity-finder app that uses Google Places, web/Cloud AI, offline caching, theming, and social features to help bored users decide what to do.

• Highly polished, feature-rich implementation
• Deep API integration and offline caching
• Entertaining, clear, and thorough demo

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 24 hours · 6 reviews

“I think that this is probably the best app I've seen. The video did not only have an awesome delivery, but also the app just has a lot of heart in it.”

Ben Lareau

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Turning nearby parks into discoverable, filterable destinations

An app to discover, filter, review, and share nearby parks with maps, favorites, and user accounts.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful filters and amenities search
• Clean navigation across multiple screens

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“An app that I would have loved to use years ago to find parks in my area that were out of the way. Filters are definitely a part of the app that becomes super useful, as not all information about a park is easy to find, such as whether it has public bathrooms or water fountains.”

Danny Hanekamp

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Helping UIUC students never miss an RSO event

An event discovery app for UIUC student RSOs with calendar, reminders, recommendations, and filtering.

• Polished UX with accessibility attention
• Rich event features (reminders, maps, filters)
• Personalized starring and recommendations

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“I'd say it's the best app to get students involved on campus and very practical for a huge campus like UIUC. The starring system, personalized recommendations and reminders made the app feel polished and well thought out.”

Liam Hayes

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Find events, chat, and organize your social life

An event-discovery app with feeds, maps, profiles, DMs, and customizable themes for finding and organizing local activities.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Thoughtful UX with filters and theming
• Integrated messaging and event management

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 10 hours · 4 reviews

“I thought this app was really ambitious because it combined a lot of different systems into one project, like event discovery, messaging, profiles, filters, map integration, and theme customization.”

Andrea Plascencia

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Craft patterns meet community in a polished hub

A craft pattern sharing app with search, filters, bookmarks, ratings, and a community gallery of finished projects.

• Polished multi-screen UI with rich features
• Robust search, filter, and bookmarking system
• Thoughtful community gallery integration

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“I like that it works both as a craft database and also a community space where users can browse projects, search by craft type, filter by difficulty, category, tags and other things.”

Lucia Cuadro

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Smart campus events hub with personalized discovery

Campus events app that centralizes events, personalizes a For You feed, and offers organizers analytics, RSVPs, and bookmarks.

• Polished multi-screen UX with many features
• Personalized For You algorithm using relevance scoring
• Organizer tools including editing and analytics

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The "For You" page algorithm is a great touch because it uses weighted scoring for majors and interests to help students cut through the noise of campus social media. It’s really impressive that you even thought to include an analytics dashboard for organizers.”

Jason Lyu

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Matching solo travelers by trips, budgets, and vibes

An app that connects solo travelers by matching overlapping trips, destinations, and preferences so they can plan and share travel together.

• Clear real-world problem focus
• Multiple matching and search flows
• Profile and trip management features

MVP ✓ · 29 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked the idea behind this app because it solves a problem that a lot of people actually have when traveling alone. The matching system based on overlapping travel dates, budget, and travel style was super cool, and I could definitely see something like this being useful”

Sofia Ranallo

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

From fridge photo to frittata with AI magic

A recipe book app with AI-powered fridge scanning, nutrition estimation, and social recipe sharing using local and cloud storage.

• Polished multi-feature recipe manager
• AI fridge scanner and nutrition estimator
• Integrates Room, Firebase Auth, and Firestore

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“This is really useful, great ui design and also convenient. The AI scanner is something really cool I have not see before.”

2. Best Game Design

Rishi Suresh

Winner — Best Game Design

Run the illegal server, outplay the raids

A lore-rich, card-based resource management game where you run an illegal server, collect and compile rare cards, and manage heat to avoid raids and win.

• Deep, interconnected game systems
• Extensive in-app lore and codex
• Polished UI with multiple game states

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 37 hours · 6 reviews

“His game had a very unique and ambitious concept, and what stood out most was how complete and polished it felt despite being built in a short amount of time.”

Joshua Studee

Nominee — Best Game Design

Siege the palace in a deep strategy showdown

Turn-based strategy game where players build units and structures to battle across a board and siege opposing palaces, including AI and four-player modes.

• Rich, well-defined strategy mechanics
• Multiple modes including AI and 4-player
• Polished UI with rules and unit info

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Very unique game, this was one of my favorite apps I've seen. I really love the idea, just wished the video was recorded as more of a screen record.”

Kenny Mei

Nominee — Best Game Design

Build, optimize, and analyze your virtual factory

An idle factory-tycoon game with profiles, upgradeable machines, materials, and analytics-driven simulations.

• Polished multi-profile game flow
• Rich upgrade and economy mechanics
• In-depth analytics and simulations

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“I like how you and Claude added analytics into the game, that almost seems like the main attraction. I've seen clicking-type games before but never firm analytics included.”

Luxi Chu

Nominee — Best Game Design

Save your money, save your pig farm

A budget tracker that gamifies saving with a virtual pig farm that thrives or dies based on staying within budget.

• Creative budget–game integration
• Complex interactive farm mechanics
• Clear budget tracking features

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“Absolutely love the drawings... the way that they all share the same features and design characteristics, I feel like you drew them yourselves, which adds so much to the app and makes it so beautiful and interesting in so many ways.”

Bryson Kageler

Nominee — Best Game Design

Lambda-powered tower defense with endlessly extensible towers

A procedurally generated tower defense game with reusable lambda-based tower and upgrade systems.

• Sophisticated lambda-based tower design
• Procedural wave generation and enemy variety
• Well-structured, extensible code architecture

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The use of lambdas to define tower behaviors, upgrades, and firing patterns created a very reusable and scalable architecture that felt significantly more advanced than a typical class hierarchy approach.”

Jun Yang

Nominee — Best Game Design

Make your phone earn your attention back

An alarm and focus app that locks your phone until you beat built-in mini games like Tic Tac Toe, Tetris, Eulerian trails, and a shooter.

• Multiple custom mini-games integrated smoothly
• Clever alarm and focus-lock mechanics
• Thoughtful game difficulty and UX design

MVP — · 19 hours · 1 review

“Turning an alarm clock into a mandatory gauntlet of mini-games like Eulerian Trail and Tetris is a brilliant, high-stakes way to force the brain into "focus mode" before you even have a chance to hit snooze.”

Cristofer Alfaro

Nominee — Best Game Design

Turning study streaks into competitive, gamified fun

A gamified study tracker with streaks, leaderboards, challenges, and cosmetic customization inspired by Duolingo.

• Rich gamification systems and mechanics
• Multiple polished screens and features
• Thoughtful streak, shop, and cosmetic design

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 1 review

“The "streak breaker" and "shield" mechanics are a hilarious and brilliant way to turn mundane studying into a high-stakes competitive game, making it much more engaging than a standard timer.”

Natan Przybylko

Nominee — Best Game Design

Master blackjack with stats-driven card counting training

An Android blackjack training app that teaches card counting, basic strategy, tracks stats, and includes a playable blackjack mode.

• Rich blackjack training feature set
• Detailed stats and session history visuals
• Integrated play mode using training concepts

MVP — · 23 hours · 0 reviews

3. Best Everyday Utility App

Chaitanya Purohit

Winner — Best Everyday Utility App

Smarter office hours and class planning in one app

An academic planner that syncs classes, assignments, and office hours, recommends sessions, and guides students around campus.

• Rich multi-screen scheduling and planning
• Integrations: Canvas ICS, PrairieLearn, MTD, Maps
• Thoughtful notifications and accessibility options

MVP ✓ · 8 challenges · 23 hours · 5 reviews

“Overall, the app feels very student-centered, well organized, and realistic for everyday campus use.”

Opal Ruangthammakit

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Streamlining dorm maintenance with smart, real-time routing

Android app for dorm maintenance requests with role-based accounts, real-time status, and push notifications for students and staff.

• Robust real-time backend integration
• Thoughtful multi-role UX for students and staff
• Complex push notification pipeline

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“The automatic complaint routing and real-time updates address a frustration everyone in the dorms has faced; the integration with cloud functions and end-to-end completeness are very impressive.”

Krish Mellempudi

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Shortest paths across campus, tailored for students

A UIUC-focused campus navigation app using OpenStreetMap and Dijkstra’s algorithm to route students between buildings with schedules, favorites, and accessibility options.

• Complex routing with Dijkstra and OSM
• Rich feature set (schedule, favorites, settings)
• Thoughtful accessibility and customization options

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“I really liked how I could add my schedule and favorites, and later be able to access them to get my route. It would be so useful for me.”

Tarun Srinivas

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

From fridge to plate, intelligently and on time

An intelligent pantry and meal planner app that tracks ingredients, suggests recipes, manages expiry dates, and supports cooking and meal planning.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich feature set with multiple APIs
• Thoughtful expiry and cook-mode workflows

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 7 reviews

“this project showcases impressive technical integration with the use of OpenFoods, and Spoonacular APIs to solve food waste. the inclusion of cook mode and automated expiry tracking showcases your deep empathy for users kitchen experience.”

Bella Narciso

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Automating four-year degree planning with smart algorithms

An academic planning app that generates and compares four‑year UIUC degree plans based on goals, credits, and interests.

• Sophisticated plan generation algorithm
• Polished multi-screen UX with onboarding and tabs
• Clear explanation of technical approach

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The functionality is incredibly useful for students at all universities, as this is a problem that many students have. Also, being able to plan for graduation timelines that are not the typical 4 years is also really cool.”

Ahaana Goswamy

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Turning scholarship chaos into a personalized match feed

Android app that profiles students and matches them to eligible scholarships with filtering, saving, and application tracking.

• Well-structured matching and filtering logic
• Thoughtful UX for tracking applications
• Clear, compelling problem framing

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“The matching system especially stood out because of the amount of logic and edge cases it handled across GPA requirements, majors, citizenship, and eligibility combinations. The UI was clean, the navigation was intuitive, and features like saved scholarships, status tracking, cou”

Kacie Moon

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

From messy mornings to data-driven outfit planning

A wardrobe management and outfit-planning app with mannequins, statistics, laundry tracking, and weather-based packing lists.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful wardrobe analytics and tracking
• Innovative mannequin-based outfit preview

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 5 reviews

“This is a very cool app that lets you see how a certain outfit you have in your head would look when put together. Particularly useful for individuals with a very large closet.”

Alexander Bazan

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

One dashboard to finally get you caught up

Caught Up aggregates messages, emails, academic notifications, and calendar events into a unified, customizable notification recap app with account-based sync.

• Integrated Firebase auth and data storage
• Multi-source aggregation with scraping and APIs
• Polished UI with filters, themes, and calendar

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“Caught Up is solving a real problem, juggling Canvas, PrairieLearn, Gmail, and Outlook all in one place is something every student here needs. The filtered messages and swipe to dismiss make it feel like a real polished app.”

4. Best Personal Fitness App

Nazli Okus

Winner — Best Personal Fitness App

Your smart, personalized workout coach in your pocket

A personalized workout app that recommends, tracks, and guides workouts with history, education, and customizable settings.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Smart workout recommendation logic
• Rich tracking, history, and settings

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“There are so many more interesting and useful features than this, and it's a really packed and well-rounded workout app that covers all bases of a workout. Amazing job!”

Rohan Frijo Manjaly

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

One-stop AI-powered gym guide for UIUC lifters

A one-stop UIUC gym companion app that tracks machine usage, workouts, macros, and offers an AI fitness coach for ARC/CRCE users.

• Rich, cohesive feature set
• Real-time machine usage and routines
• Integrated AI fitness coach via API

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“Great work on creating an app that solves a lot of problems in UIUC face. I like the numerous features present like the AI fitness coach and telling everybody that you are using the machine.”

Jonas Martinkus

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Level up your life with quests and macros

A gamified task, fitness, and nutrition manager with quests, workout plans, weight tracking, and USDA-powered calorie tracking.

• Multiple integrated feature screens
• Gamified quests and achievements system
• USDA API calorie and macro tracking

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I liked that this app, despite originally being a task tracking app, integrates a lot of other functions like managing calories and workout progress. I think these tasks are where people usually lose the motivation to complete, so making the app game-based is a really wise choice”

James Douglas

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Track your lifts, stats, and progress everywhere

A workout tracking app that logs lifts, shows PRs and estimated 1RMs, visualizes progress over time, surfaces fitness articles, and syncs data via Firebase login.

• Multiple polished feature screens
• Progress graphs and PR/1RM stats
• Cloud sync with Firebase auth

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 21 hours · 8 reviews

“This workout app successfully tackles the complexities of personal fitness tracking, particularly through its dynamic progress visualization and cloud-based data synchronization. The implementation of a one-rep max estimator and the "Progress" page shows a great understanding of ”

Pio Rosell Del Aguila

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

From goals to gains: your personalized workout architect

A personalized workout builder that generates routines based on goals, equipment, preferences, and tracks history, progress, favorites, and schedules.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• High polish with themes and modes
• Personalized recommendations and feedback loops

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I was honestly very impressed by this app. The way that he had the workouts down to preferences showed a like button or a replacement button was also very smart and something I hadn’t incorporated into my app.”

Logan Loebig

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Personalized workout plans that actually guide your week

A personalized workout planner that generates weekly exercise plans and goals based on user profile, tracks progress, and manages saved routines.

• Rich, multi-screen fitness workflow
• Detailed workout logging with PR tracking
• Goal-based calorie and progress calculations

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“You've got more features here than most student projects; this could honestly be a real app. Overall 10/10.”

Isaac Varghese

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Turn your lifting stats into global strength rankings

A workout tracking app that logs lifts, tracks progress, computes strength rankings, and syncs with Firebase leaderboards.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Advanced strength ranking and analytics logic
• Firebase auth and public leaderboard integration

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“Isaac's project stood out because it combined detailed workout tracking with strong gamification and progression systems that made the app feel engaging beyond simple logging. The Firebase integration, shareable rankings, exercise history, routines, templates, and progression tra”

Ved Patel

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Level up your gym journey with smart tracking

A gym tracking app with workouts, splits, reminders, history, bodyweight charts, nutrition, and a unique strength-level ranking feature.

• Multiple integrated fitness features
• Unique strength ranking system
• Clear, structured demo walkthrough

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“It's got plenty of great features, such as workout scheduling and the split chooser, and overall, it looks to be a very useful app for anyone going to the gym.”

5. Best Research Workflow App

Meer Wahid Ali

Winner — Best Research Workflow App

Keeping complex lab experiments on schedule and organized

An Android lab assistant app to schedule, track, and log multi-day materials science experiments with procedures, calendars, data export, and analytics.

• Domain-specific lab workflow support
• Rich feature set: calendar, stats, CSV export
• Clear, motivated demo tied to real use

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 24 hours · 3 reviews

“Meer's project stood out because it solved a very specific real world problem in a thoughtful and highly practical way. The structure felt organized, scalable, and realistic enough that it could genuinely be adopted in a lab setting beyond the course itself.”

Brian Morse

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Connecting Illinois students to campus research opportunities

Android app that connects UIUC students with professors’ research opportunities using Firebase-backed profiles and applications.

• Clean multi-screen UX with auth and profiles
• Firebase/Firestore-backed data and messaging
• Targeted to UIUC research matching use case

MVP — · 26 hours · 3 reviews

“Every detail of this app looks so well-thought out, even the visual at the startup of the app and the title. As someone actively looking for research opportunities, this would totally be an app I would use - it consolidates information and might make it easier for communication.”

Hannah Booth

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Customizable Plinko for teaching probability and recovery

An adjustable Plinko simulator for a teacher, visualizing distributions with live graphs, history, and exportable stats.

• Polished multi-screen UI with graphs and history
• Rich domain logic for customizable Plinko modes
• Clear educational purpose and teacher-focused features

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 25 hours · 6 reviews

“Haynes Plinko is one of the more thoughtful projects here. The history screen, copy-stats button and real time graph show product thinking rather than just a demo.”

Vasilije Djuranovic

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Digitizing the lab notebook with collaborative clarity

A lab notebook app with Supabase-backed auth, experiment management, templates, and collaborative commenting for scientific experiments.

• Real backend with Supabase auth and data
• Rich experiment management and templates
• Collaborative commenting for experiments

MVP — · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“LabNotebook solves a real, unglamorous problem — scientists losing track of experiments in messy notebooks — and does it well. The feature set (tagging, templates, multi-user commenting, Supabase backend) is impressively complete for a first app.”

Xuanrui Zhang

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

One search to tame your scattered research papers

An academic literature search app that unifies results from multiple databases with previews, saving, tagging, and citation tools.

• Polished multi-screen UX and interactions
• Unified model across three heterogeneous sources
• Thoughtful features like long-press previews and tagging

MVP — · 21 hours · 7 reviews

“The information is displayed in a very approachable way while still allowing for more technical uses through features such as quick long-press previews, saved collections with tags, and citation exporting. This allows the app to be a friendly interface while still serving as a se”

Purab Arora

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Visual crawler that catches broken paths first

An app that crawls a website, builds an interactive link graph, and flags broken paths for startups.

• Interactive visual link graph
• Automated broken-link detection
• Configurable layouts and styling

MVP ✓ · 7 challenges · 13 hours · 7 reviews

“I think this was actually a really great idea and I think it was executed really well. I think this is super useful and wouldn't be surprised if this won.”

Mohammed Abualsaud

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Smartly scoring and tracking your next opportunity

Android app that helps students find, score, and track internships and research opportunities based on their profile and academic year.

• Thoughtful matching-score logic and breakdown
• Well-designed tracker and calendar workflow
• Clear problem focus on freshmen opportunities

MVP ✓ · 9 challenges · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“The matching score with breakdown is the standout feature. Showing why a score is 10% vs. 100% (which skills missing, which year mismatched) turns a number into actionable feedback.”

Elie Netzah

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Never lose a tool in your workshop again

An inventory app for organizing workshop tools by rooms, storage units, and precise locations with searchable tags and codes.

• Rich hierarchical storage modeling
• Robust search and tagging system
• Thoughtful real-world workflow design

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“Your app is awesome! It is made by you for you and could easily be applied to other use cases and people. This is the spirit of this class.”

6. Best Medical Health Tracking App

Harsh Patel

Winner — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning inhaler habits into actionable medical data

An inhaler dose tracking app that logs usage, visualizes trends, and exports data for doctors using local storage and charts.

• Polished, feature-rich health tracking workflow
• Thoughtful medical use-case with data export
• Robust data model with Room and charts

MVP ✓ · 10 challenges · 28 hours · 5 reviews

“This looks like a super useful app; one feature that I didn't even think of, but was genius when I saw it, was being able to export the data. The range of customization for inhaler usage schedules was a super great and necessary addition, as not all patients follow the same proce”

Dylan Seiffer

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Dining hall nutrition meets smart, social tracking

A campus-focused nutrition and fitness tracker that logs dining hall meals, exercise, water intake, and crowd levels while computing personalized calorie goals.

• Rich, integrated health feature set
• Personalized calorie and goal calculations
• Crowd-sourced dining hall busyness info

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“A really comprehensive app that combines all parts of fitness into one. The crowdsourcing feature where you track busyness for dining halls is also great.”

Erin Kendi

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Simulated heartbeats, real insights for calmer breathing

Android wellness app that simulates heart-rate monitoring, guides breathing sessions, tracks trends, and offers AI-based insights with local data storage.

• Polished multi-screen UX with settings and history
• Uses Room for persistent storage and test data tools
• Thoughtful features like stress thresholds and dev controls

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The app was build to promote a better lifestyle by tracking heart rate and offering gudied breathing exercises.”

Yuhan Zhou

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Gamified health tracking with pets, goals, and insights

A multi-screen health companion app that tracks wellness metrics, visualizes trends, and gamifies consistency with virtual pets and coins.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• Clever gamified health mechanics
• Clear explanation of features and goals

MVP — · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“My favorite part is the gamification system. Earning coins, buying virtual pets, and growing a garden make the app feel more fun and motivating.”

Edison Zhou

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning disease knowledge into a gamified learning journey

Medli is a disease-awareness and study app with accounts, quizzes, AI chat, tracking, and rich disease exploration tools.

• Very rich feature set and flows
• Integrated AI chat and news/API usage
• Polished, coherent learning and tracking UX

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“"Medli" is an incredibly ambitious and feature-rich application that stands out for its comprehensive approach to health education, successfully integrating complex components like an interactive body map, symptom trackers, and a real-time health news feed.”

Rishab Navadgi

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

AI-powered companion for smarter diabetes management

An AI-powered diabetes management app that tracks glucose, analyzes trends, and offers personalized lifestyle and meal advice.

• Rich, well-structured feature set
• Deep AI integration with Cloud API
• Thoughtful UX for elderly and patients

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall this app feels like something that could actually be used in real life, not just a class project.”

Dylan Ciccarelli

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning cigarette habits into data-driven quitting power

An app to track cigarette use, costs, and quitting goals with logs, stats, achievements, and customizable home widgets.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Polished multi-screen UX and interactions
• Thoughtful quitting and health-support tools

MVP — · 19 hours · 8 reviews

“Dylan's app is a really amazing self-improvement app that helps people keep track of their smoking habits to eventually quit. There are many different statistics that users can keep track of, and the app has a lot of customizable features.”

Ashmita Appineni

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Smart, accessible triage that bridges home and ER

MediTriage is a symptom-based triage app that scores severity, gives next-step advice, and can call 911 or contacts with accessibility features.

• Thoughtful emergency and safety workflows
• Rich feature set and accessibility focus
• Clear triage logic with weighted symptoms

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“There were a several health related considerations incorporated in the app that reflected thorough background research on what medical emergencies look like, and what a patient may need to make it easier for them to get access to help- such as the nearby ER location feature.”

7. Best Assistive Impact App

Bhumik Khatwani

Winner — Best Assistive Impact App

A bulletproof smartphone for the people you support

An ultra-simplified Android launcher for seniors with large buttons, medication reminders, health info storage, and a custom kiosk mode to keep users inside the app.

• Production-level polish and edge-case handling
• Ambitious kiosk mode and OCR integration
• Exceptionally clear, engaging real-user focus

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“That kind of "invisible" work is what separates a student project from a life-changing tool.”

Caroline Dahlhoff

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Making family tech help simple, safe, and shared

An Android app for families to create, share, and follow step-by-step tech tutorials tailored for elderly relatives.

• Highly polished UX and thoughtful details
• Robust feature set with Firebase integration
• Clear dual-mode design for elders and family

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The app did a great job focusing on accessibility and solving a genuine everyday problem. I like how you included large buttons, simple navigation, and the call for help feature.”

Mia Bowers

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Guided phone lessons tailored for elderly learners

An instructional app that helps elderly users learn phone tasks through categorized, difficulty-labeled lessons with audio guidance.

• Thoughtful UX for elderly users
• Rich lesson metadata and filtering
• Audio read-aloud accessibility feature

MVP — · 24 hours · 5 reviews

“Mia's project stood out because it focused on a very real and often overlooked problem in a thoughtful and approachable way. The app was clearly designed with its target audience in mind, and features like large visuals, color coded categories, lesson difficulty indicators, estim”

Yuexuan Zhang

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Elder safety, reimagined across phone, watch, and cloud

A multi-module elder safety system with phone, caregiver, and Wear OS apps for daily check-ins, fall detection, and real-time monitoring via Firebase.

• Highly polished multi-device ecosystem
• Sophisticated fall detection and alert logic
• Strong testing and architectural discipline

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I liked how there is a streak counter, I believe it really allows the users to keep coming back. Having a medical history review for first responders was also a good idea since it helps optimise the emergency response.”

Pranav Ramadas

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Guiding seniors through smartphones, one button at a time

An accessibility-focused Android assistant that overlays explanations and live guides on other apps to help seniors understand phone interfaces.

• Innovative overlay screen reader feature
• Custom AI-based button description system
• Accessibility options for seniors (text, contrast, audio)

MVP ✓ · 24 hours · 0 reviews

Valeria Horta

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Finding affordable tech resources across Chicago

An app that helps Chicago users find affordable or loanable technology resources via an interactive map, filters, and detailed listings.

• Polished, multi-screen map and list UI
• Rich filtering and detail views with actions
• Clear focus on accessibility and usability

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 1 review

“I like how intuitive it is to use the app, especially the markers portion and being able to get info very quickly. It also is very helpful to the target audience.”

David Li

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Emergency help, designed for people not phones

AssistNow is an SOS and daily check-in app tailored for elderly and disabled users with simple and advanced modes, automated alerts, and safety features.

• Thoughtful UX for elderly/disabled users
• Rich safety feature set (SOS, check-ins, geofencing)
• Polished, coherent settings and customization

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“I really enjoyed hearing the thought process of creating this app as well as the clear intentionality behind the UI decisions. I would definitely suggest for my grandparents!”

Naysa Srivastava

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Accessible AAC with powerful caregiver customization

An AAC communication app with customizable boards and a secure caregiver mode for neurodivergent users.

• Thoughtful accessibility-focused design
• Secure, global caregiver settings system
• Customizable symbol boards and phrase bank

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 28 hours · 2 reviews

“I really love the goal of this app to take an idea that has already been used to help people and proven to be a success and make it more accessible to those who can't afford it. I was pleasantly surprised by the caregiver settings, but I love how they are designed to make the app”

8. Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Atharv Joshi

Winner — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-driven workout coach that actually feels real

AI-powered workout planner with Firebase auth, plan generation, exercise library, and workout history tracking.

• Production-like polish and completeness
• Integrates multiple real-world APIs
• Rich, coherent fitness feature set

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Overall, this is so cool and I could totally see this becoming something popular!”

Ahanaa Malashetti

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered workouts tailored to your gym and goals

GymBuddy is an AI-powered fitness trainer that builds personalized workouts based on user goals, energy, time, and available equipment, while tracking progress and streaks.

• Rich, polished multi-screen UX
• AI-driven personalization and chatbot coach
• Equipment-aware workouts with image-based setup

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“The equipment scanning feature is a super clever use of image recognition that solves the annoying problem of manually logging every weight in the gym, making the setup feel seamless.”

Jericho Yutuc

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Track every climb, chase goals, celebrate progress

A rock climbing tracker app with live sessions, goals, stats, achievements, and social feed features.

• Rich stats and lifetime analytics
• Goal-setting and achievement system
• Multiple screens with cohesive UX

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 17 hours · 2 reviews

“I think this is a really creative idea that a lot of people wouldn't think of. I like the level of detail users can go into when it comes to logging their climb and the social aspect of the app kind of reminds me of Strava, a popular running app.”

Rumtin Khorram

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered gym companion with live machine availability

DimFlow is a gym companion app that uses AI to generate workout plans, track workouts and nutrition, and show real-time gym machine availability with rich guidance tools.

• Very broad, integrated feature set
• Polished UX with many working screens
• Nontrivial AI and data integration

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I was also impressed by how AI creates personalized workout plans based on the user’s lifestyle. The app supports not only workout-related feedback but also your nutritions and diet plan, which I think is very useful.”

August Dornon

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Smart Illini-themed lifting plans with social gains

IlliniFit generates personalized lifting programs, tracks workout history and progress, and lets friends share and view each other’s lifts.

• Sophisticated workout generator logic
• Progress tracking with weight recommendations
• Social feed with friend codes

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“There were lots of interesting features incorporated - my favorites were: the one where you're given recommendations based on your history & the one where you can connect with your friends on the app (I think seeing your friends hit the gym will also motivate you).”

Leqi Rong

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered personalized workouts from your own server

An AI-assisted workout planner that generates daily and weekly training plans based on user profile and preferences via a custom local API.

• Custom local server and API integration
• Personalized daily and weekly workout plans
• Exercise details with images and safety cues

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall, this is a very strong and practical project with real-world potential.”

Eric Hu

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Turning workout logs into personalized fitness insights

A fitness tracking app that logs workouts, analyzes stats, and generates personalized rest, nutrition, and training recommendations.

• Rich multi-page fitness workflow
• Detailed statistics and visual breakdowns
• Personalized recommendations and achievements

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 2 reviews

“I like that the app gives the user feedback about their workout, instead of just setting exercises.”

Derin Aytekin

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Forge: social, data-driven workouts that actually stick

Forge is a Firebase-backed workout app that creates programs, tracks lifts and streaks, manages reminders, and supports social challenges and BMI tracking.

• Rich workout and progress-tracking features
• Robust Firebase auth and cloud data integration
• Polished UI with multi-screen navigation

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 18 hours · 6 reviews

“I think this is super helpful for people who frequently go to the gym and want a structured plan for the future. I also like the personal records which motivate the user.”

9. Best Campus Companion App

Sulaiman Alkharashi

Winner — Best Campus Companion App

Smarter campus decisions with live crowd and support

Appulani Pulse helps UIC students see real-time facility busyness, manage courses and office hours, and chat with staff for guidance.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• Thoughtful student–staff chat system
• Polished UI with themes and history

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“In every regard, from providing location schedules to offering staff support, this app seems to be really helpful.”

Sofia Hryhorasz

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Turning campus study chaos into organized, live zones

An app that helps Illinois students discover, evaluate, and coordinate study spots on campus with live busyness, check-ins, groups, and shared collections.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful, robust state and data handling
• Clear, campus-focused use case

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I really like this project idea because it feels genuinely useful for students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I think it definitely has the potential to exceed expectations if fully developed.”

Siddh Chetan Gandhi

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

One campus, all events, one Local Loop

Local Loop aggregates campus events into a single app where students can discover, RSVP, track, and manage events with Firebase-backed accounts.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich event features and interactions
• Backend integration with Firebase

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Local Loop is an exceptionally well-thought-out platform that tackles the fragmented nature of campus event discovery with a sophisticated feature set usually seen in much more mature projects.”

Amelie Dall'erba

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

One-stop, smart guide to everything happening on campus

Campus Events aggregates UIUC events into one app with filtering, maps, favorites, reminders, and social features.

• Rich, polished feature set
• Uses web scraping and Firestore backend
• Interactive map and social event tools

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked your idea of combining events from emails, websites, and other sources into one app, especially because campus events are easy to miss when they are spread across different platforms.”

Richa Chhadwa

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Matching Illini through verified, interest-based connections

Campus Connect helps UIUC students match, chat, and connect with others sharing similar interests using authenticated illinois.edu accounts.

• Robust auth and email verification
• Interest-based matching and discovery feed
• Real-time chat with notifications and blocking

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“The scope is closer to a real app than a class project. Auth + email verification + password reset + profile creation with photos + uniqueness-checked usernames + interest-based discovery + year filtering + block/unblock + friend requests with accept/decline + real-time messaging”

Arnav Somani

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Connecting every Illini through one campus hub

Campus social networking and peer mentorship app for UIUC students with groups, ratings, messaging, and profile management.

• Rich feature set and flows
• Thoughtful campus-specific grouping logic
• Robust account and settings management

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“I really like the idea of rating classes and professors so that others can see and decided whether to take the class or not. I'm surprised that the app also has a feature where you can chat with people from the same major.”

Jose Godinez-Hernandez

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Find, track, and gamify your campus study spots

An Android app that finds nearby study spots, auto-checks users in by location, tracks busyness via Firebase, and rewards study time with collectible stickers.

• Polished multi-screen UX with sorting and maps
• Location-based auto check-in and notifications
• Firebase-backed usage history and sticker rewards

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“The automatic check in feature was one of the strongest parts since it makes the experience feel seamless and practical instead of just another map app. The Firebase integration and busyness history were really impressive because they give the app real functionality beyond just l”

Lara Ku

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Never be late changing classes on campus again

An app for UIUC students to plan class schedules by checking walking times between campus buildings and highlighting tight or impossible transitions.

• Polished schedule and connector UI
• Smart walking-time conflict detection
• Thoughtful, campus-specific feature set

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“This app felt really practical because it solves such a specific UIUC student problem that basically everyone here has experienced at some point. I especially liked the schedule feature with the color-coded walking warnings because it immediately tells you whether your schedule i”

10. Best Game Companion Experience

Cooper Wang

Winner — Best Game Companion Experience

AI Dungeon Master and map for tabletop adventures

An AI-assisted board game helper app with character and scenario creation, an AI Dungeon Master, and a synchronized map.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• AI Dungeon Master with multiple modes
• Correlated map and visual context

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“The integration of character creation, scenario building, and an AI Dungeon Master creates a complete gameplay loop. The correlated map feature is especially strong as it connects narrative actions to a useful and digestible visual representation.”

Xueyun Tian

Nominee — Best Game Companion Experience

Mood-based game picks powered by cloud AI

Android app that recommends games based on mood, player count, and AI-generated insights using cloud APIs.

• Creative mood-based recommendation concept
• Integration of cloud AI tagging/API
• Polished multi-screen browsing and favorites

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The mood-based browsing concept (six modes like "Tell Me a Story") is a creative and natural way to surface games — way more fun than a plain search bar.”

Aarav Verma

Nominee — Best Game Companion Experience

Your mission control for every rocket launch

An all-in-one model rocketry companion app for logging launches, tracking rockets, scoring competitions, and simulating flights with thrust vector control.

• Clean, multi-screen UI with rich visuals
• Domain-specific scoring and history analytics
• Interactive thrust vector control simulator

MVP — · 27 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked this app because it solved a problem that i didnt know existed and now after watching the video, i have more knowledge about the problems faced in that field and it looks like this app did a very good job at solving them!”

11. Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Teisha Rawat

Winner — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Live among quotes mapped to your emotions

A polished quote-sharing app with emotion-based tagging, customizable emotion colors, and an interactive sphere visualization of your quote moods.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Innovative emotion sphere visualization
• Thoughtful, intentional interaction design

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 23 hours · 7 reviews

“The emotion-color system is a genuinely creative idea — letting users assign colors to feelings and then mapping their posts onto an interactive 3D sphere is unlike anything else in this class.”

Akshat Bhati

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

A full-featured creative forum in your pocket

A Supabase-backed creative social media app supporting posts with tags, media by category, search, feeds, and user interactions.

• Rich social media feature set
• Thoughtful tag and search system
• Solid Supabase integration for users/posts

MVP ✓ · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“Solid execution for a social media app with real user auth, tags, search, and comments all working. The tags feature is the highlight.”

Alayna Cook

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

A social hub for rich, shareable crochet patterns

CrochetHub is a social platform for creating, browsing, and organizing rich crochet patterns with accounts, feeds, search, and saved boards.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich pattern editor with media and formatting
• Robust social and saving features

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“This is such a unique idea. CrochetHub feels like a fun and useful niche app, especially for people tired of searching for free crochet patterns online.”

Arjun Kesiraju

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Guided chip fabrication learning, from tour to AI tutor

An educational app that teaches the eight steps of chip fabrication through guided tours, quizzes, games, references, and an optional AI tutor.

• Highly structured educational flow and UX
• Multiple practice modes including reorder game
• Integrated AI tutor and external video resources

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I can see that ChipFlow is a strong educational app that makes a complex topic feel approachable. The guided chip fabrication tour, quizzes, build-a-chip game, videos, notable engineers section, and AI tutor all support learning in different ways.”

Yanbo Yang

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Imaginative AI companions with a focus on balance

An AI companion app with customizable characters, memory, shared companions, and features that encourage emotionally healthy, balanced usage.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Thoughtful healthy-usage design
• Customizable and shareable AI companions

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The memory feature is pretty cool and really suprised me since its must be pretty hard to implement.”

Danqing Wei

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Anonymous campus tree hole with smart, tagged feeds

An anonymous campus social app with feeds, tags, search, and Firebase-backed posts, comments, reactions, and user profiles.

• Rich, multi-screen social feature set
• Thoughtful feed sorting and tagging system
• Solid Firebase integration and persistence

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“Cohesive, intuitive, and holds together end to end.”

Rui Yang

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Grow your relationship by growing a musical pet

A shared music app where paired users grow a virtual pet by listening to Spotify together and chatting regularly.

• Cohesive, polished multi-screen experience
• Deep Spotify integration and pairing logic
• Creative virtual pet mechanic tied to behavior

MVP — · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Petitine is a remarkably creative concept that blends the mechanics of a virtual pet with the intimacy of shared music streaming, creating a truly unique "digital companion" for friends and couples.”

Annabelle Qiu

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Write, decompress, and drift with digital rain

Rainfall is a rain-sound journaling app with custom animated rain, mood tracking, and an anonymous community feed.

• Custom animated rain visual and seamless audio
• Integrated journaling, mood tracking, and streaks
• Anonymous community feed with Firebase backend

MVP — · 24 hours · 2 reviews

“This app was very well made, and it is obvious a lot of thought was put in to it.”

12. Best Productivity and Wellness App

Anyu Tian

Winner — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Stay on task while staying calm and focused

A combined task manager and mental wellness app with tasks, calendar reminders, focus timer, and a synchronized breathing exercise.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Integrated productivity and wellness features
• Thoughtful technical implementation details

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“The integration of a breathing exercise directly alongside a task manager is a brilliant way to address the actual stress of a busy schedule rather than just listing deadlines.”

Nina Drazenovic

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Making campus mental wellness feel like play

A gamified mental health app for college students with mood check-ins, mindfulness mini-games, XP-based growth, campus activities, and crisis support resources.

• Polished, cohesive UX and visual design
• Rich feature set with gamified progression
• Thoughtful mental health and safety focus

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“There are a lot of features that make the app really stand out. Furthermore, the helpline feature and the many other activities expands the utility of the app, and makes it more mental-health focused.”

Gexun Si

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Spin the wheel, pick a task, earn your reward

A multi-tab task manager with timers, stats, reflections, and a roulette-based task picker with customizable rewards.

• Unique roulette task selector
• Multiple integrated productivity features
• Thoughtful motivational design elements

MVP ✓ · 26 hours · 2 reviews

“I really like this app, especially the task journal where you can log and put your current thoughts, past thoughts and everything else into it that you want from your day.”

Gabriel Aguila

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Stay in your circle: daily check-ins that connect

Circle is a Firebase-backed check‑in app for groups with mood journaling, to‑dos, and shared resources.

• Multiple integrated features (journal, todos, circles)
• Backend integration with Firebase auth/data
• Thoughtful, wellness-focused UX concept

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“I really like the idea behind Circle because it feels useful and personal, not just like a random app with features added on. The daily check-in, mood trend, journal prompts, to-do list, and “circle” group system all connect well to the main goal of helping people stay in touch a”

Handi Yang

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Growing better study habits with a living tree

A student productivity app combining tasks, campus discovery, messaging, and a gamified habit-tracking tree with real-time Firebase features.

• Polished, animated habit tree with real-time updates
• Multi-tab app with tasks, explore, messaging, profile
• Thoughtful use of Firebase, auth, and Firestore rules

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 1 review

“The "checking tree" is a fantastic way to handle gamification, as it makes habit-building feel organic and visually satisfying rather than just another number on a spreadsheet.”

Samantha Elarde

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Beating decision paralysis with kinder, smarter to‑dos

An anti-overwhelm task app that randomizes tasks, tracks streaks and small wins, and adapts its tone and goals to users’ mental energy.

• Highly polished UX and interactions
• Thoughtful mental-health–aware features
• Rich settings and customization options

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall, your app was creative, emotionally aware, and clearly designed with real user struggles in mind.”

Georgie Naegele

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Locking in your limits to beat phone impulses

Anchor is a strict screen-time limiter that enforces unchangeable app limits and focused modes during lock periods.

• Strong, coherent UX around self-control
• Deep integration with device controls and home access
• Thoughtful features like reasons, progress, and anchor mode

MVP ✓ · 41 hours · 2 reviews

“I like how you focused on removing certain loopholes instead of just a reminder app or an app that motivates you. The theme was also very cool and the reasons why part really hammer down the idea.”

Angie Gray

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Gamified morning journaling with a cozy virtual room

A morning journaling app that tracks mood, sleep, and streaks while rewarding consistent use with a customizable virtual room.

• Polished, cohesive UI with multiple features
• Gamified room and streak-based rewards
• Clear wellness focus with thoughtful prompts

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“The streak system and the room customization were probably my favorite parts because they make journaling feel less like a chore and more like something you actually want to come back to. Even without that, this already felt like a complete and creative wellness app.”

All Projects

Every Spring 2026 independent project, in alphabetical order by name. Click any video thumbnail to watch the demo on YouTube.

Anyu Tian

Winner — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Stay on task while staying calm and focused

A combined task manager and mental wellness app with tasks, calendar reminders, focus timer, and a synchronized breathing exercise.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Integrated productivity and wellness features
• Thoughtful technical implementation details

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“The integration of a breathing exercise directly alongside a task manager is a brilliant way to address the actual stress of a busy schedule rather than just listing deadlines.”

Atharv Joshi

Winner — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-driven workout coach that actually feels real

AI-powered workout planner with Firebase auth, plan generation, exercise library, and workout history tracking.

• Production-like polish and completeness
• Integrates multiple real-world APIs
• Rich, coherent fitness feature set

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Overall, this is so cool and I could totally see this becoming something popular!”

Bhumik Khatwani

Winner — Best Assistive Impact App

A bulletproof smartphone for the people you support

An ultra-simplified Android launcher for seniors with large buttons, medication reminders, health info storage, and a custom kiosk mode to keep users inside the app.

• Production-level polish and edge-case handling
• Ambitious kiosk mode and OCR integration
• Exceptionally clear, engaging real-user focus

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“That kind of "invisible" work is what separates a student project from a life-changing tool.”

Chaitanya Purohit

Winner — Best Everyday Utility App

Smarter office hours and class planning in one app

An academic planner that syncs classes, assignments, and office hours, recommends sessions, and guides students around campus.

• Rich multi-screen scheduling and planning
• Integrations: Canvas ICS, PrairieLearn, MTD, Maps
• Thoughtful notifications and accessibility options

MVP ✓ · 8 challenges · 23 hours · 5 reviews

“Overall, the app feels very student-centered, well organized, and realistic for everyday campus use.”

Cooper Wang

Winner — Best Game Companion Experience

AI Dungeon Master and map for tabletop adventures

An AI-assisted board game helper app with character and scenario creation, an AI Dungeon Master, and a synchronized map.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• AI Dungeon Master with multiple modes
• Correlated map and visual context

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“The integration of character creation, scenario building, and an AI Dungeon Master creates a complete gameplay loop. The correlated map feature is especially strong as it connects narrative actions to a useful and digestible visual representation.”

Harsh Patel

Winner — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning inhaler habits into actionable medical data

An inhaler dose tracking app that logs usage, visualizes trends, and exports data for doctors using local storage and charts.

• Polished, feature-rich health tracking workflow
• Thoughtful medical use-case with data export
• Robust data model with Room and charts

MVP ✓ · 10 challenges · 28 hours · 5 reviews

“This looks like a super useful app; one feature that I didn't even think of, but was genius when I saw it, was being able to export the data. The range of customization for inhaler usage schedules was a super great and necessary addition, as not all patients follow the same proce”

Meer Wahid Ali

Winner — Best Research Workflow App

Keeping complex lab experiments on schedule and organized

An Android lab assistant app to schedule, track, and log multi-day materials science experiments with procedures, calendars, data export, and analytics.

• Domain-specific lab workflow support
• Rich feature set: calendar, stats, CSV export
• Clear, motivated demo tied to real use

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 24 hours · 3 reviews

“Meer's project stood out because it solved a very specific real world problem in a thoughtful and highly practical way. The structure felt organized, scalable, and realistic enough that it could genuinely be adopted in a lab setting beyond the course itself.”

Nazli Okus

Winner — Best Personal Fitness App

Your smart, personalized workout coach in your pocket

A personalized workout app that recommends, tracks, and guides workouts with history, education, and customizable settings.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Smart workout recommendation logic
• Rich tracking, history, and settings

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“There are so many more interesting and useful features than this, and it's a really packed and well-rounded workout app that covers all bases of a workout. Amazing job!”

Rishi Suresh

Winner — Best Game Design

Run the illegal server, outplay the raids

A lore-rich, card-based resource management game where you run an illegal server, collect and compile rare cards, and manage heat to avoid raids and win.

• Deep, interconnected game systems
• Extensive in-app lore and codex
• Polished UI with multiple game states

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 37 hours · 6 reviews

“His game had a very unique and ambitious concept, and what stood out most was how complete and polished it felt despite being built in a short amount of time.”

Sulaiman Alkharashi

Winner — Best Campus Companion App

Smarter campus decisions with live crowd and support

Appulani Pulse helps UIC students see real-time facility busyness, manage courses and office hours, and chat with staff for guidance.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• Thoughtful student–staff chat system
• Polished UI with themes and history

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“In every regard, from providing location schedules to offering staff support, this app seems to be really helpful.”

Taarush Goswami

Winner — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Turning boredom into plans with AI-powered discovery

An activity-finder app that uses Google Places, web/Cloud AI, offline caching, theming, and social features to help bored users decide what to do.

• Highly polished, feature-rich implementation
• Deep API integration and offline caching
• Entertaining, clear, and thorough demo

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 24 hours · 6 reviews

“I think that this is probably the best app I've seen. The video did not only have an awesome delivery, but also the app just has a lot of heart in it.”

Teisha Rawat

Winner — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Live among quotes mapped to your emotions

A polished quote-sharing app with emotion-based tagging, customizable emotion colors, and an interactive sphere visualization of your quote moods.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Innovative emotion sphere visualization
• Thoughtful, intentional interaction design

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 23 hours · 7 reviews

“The emotion-color system is a genuinely creative idea — letting users assign colors to feelings and then mapping their posts onto an interactive 3D sphere is unlike anything else in this class.”

Aarav Verma

Nominee — Best Game Companion Experience

Your mission control for every rocket launch

An all-in-one model rocketry companion app for logging launches, tracking rockets, scoring competitions, and simulating flights with thrust vector control.

• Clean, multi-screen UI with rich visuals
• Domain-specific scoring and history analytics
• Interactive thrust vector control simulator

MVP — · 27 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked this app because it solved a problem that i didnt know existed and now after watching the video, i have more knowledge about the problems faced in that field and it looks like this app did a very good job at solving them!”

Ahaana Goswamy

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Turning scholarship chaos into a personalized match feed

Android app that profiles students and matches them to eligible scholarships with filtering, saving, and application tracking.

• Well-structured matching and filtering logic
• Thoughtful UX for tracking applications
• Clear, compelling problem framing

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“The matching system especially stood out because of the amount of logic and edge cases it handled across GPA requirements, majors, citizenship, and eligibility combinations. The UI was clean, the navigation was intuitive, and features like saved scholarships, status tracking, cou”

Ahanaa Malashetti

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered workouts tailored to your gym and goals

GymBuddy is an AI-powered fitness trainer that builds personalized workouts based on user goals, energy, time, and available equipment, while tracking progress and streaks.

• Rich, polished multi-screen UX
• AI-driven personalization and chatbot coach
• Equipment-aware workouts with image-based setup

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“The equipment scanning feature is a super clever use of image recognition that solves the annoying problem of manually logging every weight in the gym, making the setup feel seamless.”

Akshat Bhati

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

A full-featured creative forum in your pocket

A Supabase-backed creative social media app supporting posts with tags, media by category, search, feeds, and user interactions.

• Rich social media feature set
• Thoughtful tag and search system
• Solid Supabase integration for users/posts

MVP ✓ · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“Solid execution for a social media app with real user auth, tags, search, and comments all working. The tags feature is the highlight.”

Alayna Cook

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

A social hub for rich, shareable crochet patterns

CrochetHub is a social platform for creating, browsing, and organizing rich crochet patterns with accounts, feeds, search, and saved boards.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich pattern editor with media and formatting
• Robust social and saving features

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“This is such a unique idea. CrochetHub feels like a fun and useful niche app, especially for people tired of searching for free crochet patterns online.”

Alexander Bazan

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

One dashboard to finally get you caught up

Caught Up aggregates messages, emails, academic notifications, and calendar events into a unified, customizable notification recap app with account-based sync.

• Integrated Firebase auth and data storage
• Multi-source aggregation with scraping and APIs
• Polished UI with filters, themes, and calendar

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“Caught Up is solving a real problem, juggling Canvas, PrairieLearn, Gmail, and Outlook all in one place is something every student here needs. The filtered messages and swipe to dismiss make it feel like a real polished app.”

Amelie Dall'erba

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

One-stop, smart guide to everything happening on campus

Campus Events aggregates UIUC events into one app with filtering, maps, favorites, reminders, and social features.

• Rich, polished feature set
• Uses web scraping and Firestore backend
• Interactive map and social event tools

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked your idea of combining events from emails, websites, and other sources into one app, especially because campus events are easy to miss when they are spread across different platforms.”

Andrea Plascencia

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Craft patterns meet community in a polished hub

A craft pattern sharing app with search, filters, bookmarks, ratings, and a community gallery of finished projects.

• Polished multi-screen UI with rich features
• Robust search, filter, and bookmarking system
• Thoughtful community gallery integration

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“I like that it works both as a craft database and also a community space where users can browse projects, search by craft type, filter by difficulty, category, tags and other things.”

Angie Gray

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Gamified morning journaling with a cozy virtual room

A morning journaling app that tracks mood, sleep, and streaks while rewarding consistent use with a customizable virtual room.

• Polished, cohesive UI with multiple features
• Gamified room and streak-based rewards
• Clear wellness focus with thoughtful prompts

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“The streak system and the room customization were probably my favorite parts because they make journaling feel less like a chore and more like something you actually want to come back to. Even without that, this already felt like a complete and creative wellness app.”

Annabelle Qiu

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Write, decompress, and drift with digital rain

Rainfall is a rain-sound journaling app with custom animated rain, mood tracking, and an anonymous community feed.

• Custom animated rain visual and seamless audio
• Integrated journaling, mood tracking, and streaks
• Anonymous community feed with Firebase backend

MVP — · 24 hours · 2 reviews

“This app was very well made, and it is obvious a lot of thought was put in to it.”

Arjun Kesiraju

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Guided chip fabrication learning, from tour to AI tutor

An educational app that teaches the eight steps of chip fabrication through guided tours, quizzes, games, references, and an optional AI tutor.

• Highly structured educational flow and UX
• Multiple practice modes including reorder game
• Integrated AI tutor and external video resources

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I can see that ChipFlow is a strong educational app that makes a complex topic feel approachable. The guided chip fabrication tour, quizzes, build-a-chip game, videos, notable engineers section, and AI tutor all support learning in different ways.”

Arnav Somani

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Connecting every Illini through one campus hub

Campus social networking and peer mentorship app for UIUC students with groups, ratings, messaging, and profile management.

• Rich feature set and flows
• Thoughtful campus-specific grouping logic
• Robust account and settings management

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“I really like the idea of rating classes and professors so that others can see and decided whether to take the class or not. I'm surprised that the app also has a feature where you can chat with people from the same major.”

Ashmita Appineni

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Smart, accessible triage that bridges home and ER

MediTriage is a symptom-based triage app that scores severity, gives next-step advice, and can call 911 or contacts with accessibility features.

• Thoughtful emergency and safety workflows
• Rich feature set and accessibility focus
• Clear triage logic with weighted symptoms

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“There were a several health related considerations incorporated in the app that reflected thorough background research on what medical emergencies look like, and what a patient may need to make it easier for them to get access to help- such as the nearby ER location feature.”

August Dornon

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Smart Illini-themed lifting plans with social gains

IlliniFit generates personalized lifting programs, tracks workout history and progress, and lets friends share and view each other’s lifts.

• Sophisticated workout generator logic
• Progress tracking with weight recommendations
• Social feed with friend codes

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“There were lots of interesting features incorporated - my favorites were: the one where you're given recommendations based on your history & the one where you can connect with your friends on the app (I think seeing your friends hit the gym will also motivate you).”

Bella Narciso

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Automating four-year degree planning with smart algorithms

An academic planning app that generates and compares four‑year UIUC degree plans based on goals, credits, and interests.

• Sophisticated plan generation algorithm
• Polished multi-screen UX with onboarding and tabs
• Clear explanation of technical approach

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The functionality is incredibly useful for students at all universities, as this is a problem that many students have. Also, being able to plan for graduation timelines that are not the typical 4 years is also really cool.”

Ben Lareau

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Turning nearby parks into discoverable, filterable destinations

An app to discover, filter, review, and share nearby parks with maps, favorites, and user accounts.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful filters and amenities search
• Clean navigation across multiple screens

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“An app that I would have loved to use years ago to find parks in my area that were out of the way. Filters are definitely a part of the app that becomes super useful, as not all information about a park is easy to find, such as whether it has public bathrooms or water fountains.”

Brian Morse

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Connecting Illinois students to campus research opportunities

Android app that connects UIUC students with professors’ research opportunities using Firebase-backed profiles and applications.

• Clean multi-screen UX with auth and profiles
• Firebase/Firestore-backed data and messaging
• Targeted to UIUC research matching use case

MVP — · 26 hours · 3 reviews

“Every detail of this app looks so well-thought out, even the visual at the startup of the app and the title. As someone actively looking for research opportunities, this would totally be an app I would use - it consolidates information and might make it easier for communication.”

Bryson Kageler

Nominee — Best Game Design

Lambda-powered tower defense with endlessly extensible towers

A procedurally generated tower defense game with reusable lambda-based tower and upgrade systems.

• Sophisticated lambda-based tower design
• Procedural wave generation and enemy variety
• Well-structured, extensible code architecture

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The use of lambdas to define tower behaviors, upgrades, and firing patterns created a very reusable and scalable architecture that felt significantly more advanced than a typical class hierarchy approach.”

Caroline Dahlhoff

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Making family tech help simple, safe, and shared

An Android app for families to create, share, and follow step-by-step tech tutorials tailored for elderly relatives.

• Highly polished UX and thoughtful details
• Robust feature set with Firebase integration
• Clear dual-mode design for elders and family

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The app did a great job focusing on accessibility and solving a genuine everyday problem. I like how you included large buttons, simple navigation, and the call for help feature.”

Cristofer Alfaro

Nominee — Best Game Design

Turning study streaks into competitive, gamified fun

A gamified study tracker with streaks, leaderboards, challenges, and cosmetic customization inspired by Duolingo.

• Rich gamification systems and mechanics
• Multiple polished screens and features
• Thoughtful streak, shop, and cosmetic design

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 1 review

“The "streak breaker" and "shield" mechanics are a hilarious and brilliant way to turn mundane studying into a high-stakes competitive game, making it much more engaging than a standard timer.”

Danny Hanekamp

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Helping UIUC students never miss an RSO event

An event discovery app for UIUC student RSOs with calendar, reminders, recommendations, and filtering.

• Polished UX with accessibility attention
• Rich event features (reminders, maps, filters)
• Personalized starring and recommendations

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“I'd say it's the best app to get students involved on campus and very practical for a huge campus like UIUC. The starring system, personalized recommendations and reminders made the app feel polished and well thought out.”

Danqing Wei

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Anonymous campus tree hole with smart, tagged feeds

An anonymous campus social app with feeds, tags, search, and Firebase-backed posts, comments, reactions, and user profiles.

• Rich, multi-screen social feature set
• Thoughtful feed sorting and tagging system
• Solid Firebase integration and persistence

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 6 reviews

“Cohesive, intuitive, and holds together end to end.”

David Li

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Emergency help, designed for people not phones

AssistNow is an SOS and daily check-in app tailored for elderly and disabled users with simple and advanced modes, automated alerts, and safety features.

• Thoughtful UX for elderly/disabled users
• Rich safety feature set (SOS, check-ins, geofencing)
• Polished, coherent settings and customization

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“I really enjoyed hearing the thought process of creating this app as well as the clear intentionality behind the UI decisions. I would definitely suggest for my grandparents!”

Derin Aytekin

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Forge: social, data-driven workouts that actually stick

Forge is a Firebase-backed workout app that creates programs, tracks lifts and streaks, manages reminders, and supports social challenges and BMI tracking.

• Rich workout and progress-tracking features
• Robust Firebase auth and cloud data integration
• Polished UI with multi-screen navigation

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 18 hours · 6 reviews

“I think this is super helpful for people who frequently go to the gym and want a structured plan for the future. I also like the personal records which motivate the user.”

Dylan Ciccarelli

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning cigarette habits into data-driven quitting power

An app to track cigarette use, costs, and quitting goals with logs, stats, achievements, and customizable home widgets.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Polished multi-screen UX and interactions
• Thoughtful quitting and health-support tools

MVP — · 19 hours · 8 reviews

“Dylan's app is a really amazing self-improvement app that helps people keep track of their smoking habits to eventually quit. There are many different statistics that users can keep track of, and the app has a lot of customizable features.”

Dylan Seiffer

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Dining hall nutrition meets smart, social tracking

A campus-focused nutrition and fitness tracker that logs dining hall meals, exercise, water intake, and crowd levels while computing personalized calorie goals.

• Rich, integrated health feature set
• Personalized calorie and goal calculations
• Crowd-sourced dining hall busyness info

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“A really comprehensive app that combines all parts of fitness into one. The crowdsourcing feature where you track busyness for dining halls is also great.”

Edison Zhou

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Turning disease knowledge into a gamified learning journey

Medli is a disease-awareness and study app with accounts, quizzes, AI chat, tracking, and rich disease exploration tools.

• Very rich feature set and flows
• Integrated AI chat and news/API usage
• Polished, coherent learning and tracking UX

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“"Medli" is an incredibly ambitious and feature-rich application that stands out for its comprehensive approach to health education, successfully integrating complex components like an interactive body map, symptom trackers, and a real-time health news feed.”

Elie Netzah

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Never lose a tool in your workshop again

An inventory app for organizing workshop tools by rooms, storage units, and precise locations with searchable tags and codes.

• Rich hierarchical storage modeling
• Robust search and tagging system
• Thoughtful real-world workflow design

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“Your app is awesome! It is made by you for you and could easily be applied to other use cases and people. This is the spirit of this class.”

Eric Hu

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Turning workout logs into personalized fitness insights

A fitness tracking app that logs workouts, analyzes stats, and generates personalized rest, nutrition, and training recommendations.

• Rich multi-page fitness workflow
• Detailed statistics and visual breakdowns
• Personalized recommendations and achievements

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 2 reviews

“I like that the app gives the user feedback about their workout, instead of just setting exercises.”

Erin Kendi

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Simulated heartbeats, real insights for calmer breathing

Android wellness app that simulates heart-rate monitoring, guides breathing sessions, tracks trends, and offers AI-based insights with local data storage.

• Polished multi-screen UX with settings and history
• Uses Room for persistent storage and test data tools
• Thoughtful features like stress thresholds and dev controls

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The app was build to promote a better lifestyle by tracking heart rate and offering gudied breathing exercises.”

Gabriel Aguila

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Stay in your circle: daily check-ins that connect

Circle is a Firebase-backed check‑in app for groups with mood journaling, to‑dos, and shared resources.

• Multiple integrated features (journal, todos, circles)
• Backend integration with Firebase auth/data
• Thoughtful, wellness-focused UX concept

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“I really like the idea behind Circle because it feels useful and personal, not just like a random app with features added on. The daily check-in, mood trend, journal prompts, to-do list, and “circle” group system all connect well to the main goal of helping people stay in touch a”

Georgie Naegele

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Locking in your limits to beat phone impulses

Anchor is a strict screen-time limiter that enforces unchangeable app limits and focused modes during lock periods.

• Strong, coherent UX around self-control
• Deep integration with device controls and home access
• Thoughtful features like reasons, progress, and anchor mode

MVP ✓ · 41 hours · 2 reviews

“I like how you focused on removing certain loopholes instead of just a reminder app or an app that motivates you. The theme was also very cool and the reasons why part really hammer down the idea.”

Gexun Si

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Spin the wheel, pick a task, earn your reward

A multi-tab task manager with timers, stats, reflections, and a roulette-based task picker with customizable rewards.

• Unique roulette task selector
• Multiple integrated productivity features
• Thoughtful motivational design elements

MVP ✓ · 26 hours · 2 reviews

“I really like this app, especially the task journal where you can log and put your current thoughts, past thoughts and everything else into it that you want from your day.”

Handi Yang

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Growing better study habits with a living tree

A student productivity app combining tasks, campus discovery, messaging, and a gamified habit-tracking tree with real-time Firebase features.

• Polished, animated habit tree with real-time updates
• Multi-tab app with tasks, explore, messaging, profile
• Thoughtful use of Firebase, auth, and Firestore rules

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 1 review

“The "checking tree" is a fantastic way to handle gamification, as it makes habit-building feel organic and visually satisfying rather than just another number on a spreadsheet.”

Hannah Booth

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Customizable Plinko for teaching probability and recovery

An adjustable Plinko simulator for a teacher, visualizing distributions with live graphs, history, and exportable stats.

• Polished multi-screen UI with graphs and history
• Rich domain logic for customizable Plinko modes
• Clear educational purpose and teacher-focused features

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 25 hours · 6 reviews

“Haynes Plinko is one of the more thoughtful projects here. The history screen, copy-stats button and real time graph show product thinking rather than just a demo.”

Isaac Varghese

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Turn your lifting stats into global strength rankings

A workout tracking app that logs lifts, tracks progress, computes strength rankings, and syncs with Firebase leaderboards.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Advanced strength ranking and analytics logic
• Firebase auth and public leaderboard integration

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“Isaac's project stood out because it combined detailed workout tracking with strong gamification and progression systems that made the app feel engaging beyond simple logging. The Firebase integration, shareable rankings, exercise history, routines, templates, and progression tra”

James Douglas

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Track your lifts, stats, and progress everywhere

A workout tracking app that logs lifts, shows PRs and estimated 1RMs, visualizes progress over time, surfaces fitness articles, and syncs data via Firebase login.

• Multiple polished feature screens
• Progress graphs and PR/1RM stats
• Cloud sync with Firebase auth

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 21 hours · 8 reviews

“This workout app successfully tackles the complexities of personal fitness tracking, particularly through its dynamic progress visualization and cloud-based data synchronization. The implementation of a one-rep max estimator and the "Progress" page shows a great understanding of ”

Jason Lyu

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Matching solo travelers by trips, budgets, and vibes

An app that connects solo travelers by matching overlapping trips, destinations, and preferences so they can plan and share travel together.

• Clear real-world problem focus
• Multiple matching and search flows
• Profile and trip management features

MVP ✓ · 29 hours · 3 reviews

“I really liked the idea behind this app because it solves a problem that a lot of people actually have when traveling alone. The matching system based on overlapping travel dates, budget, and travel style was super cool, and I could definitely see something like this being useful”

Jericho Yutuc

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

Track every climb, chase goals, celebrate progress

A rock climbing tracker app with live sessions, goals, stats, achievements, and social feed features.

• Rich stats and lifetime analytics
• Goal-setting and achievement system
• Multiple screens with cohesive UX

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 17 hours · 2 reviews

“I think this is a really creative idea that a lot of people wouldn't think of. I like the level of detail users can go into when it comes to logging their climb and the social aspect of the app kind of reminds me of Strava, a popular running app.”

Jonas Martinkus

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Level up your life with quests and macros

A gamified task, fitness, and nutrition manager with quests, workout plans, weight tracking, and USDA-powered calorie tracking.

• Multiple integrated feature screens
• Gamified quests and achievements system
• USDA API calorie and macro tracking

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I liked that this app, despite originally being a task tracking app, integrates a lot of other functions like managing calories and workout progress. I think these tasks are where people usually lose the motivation to complete, so making the app game-based is a really wise choice”

Jose Godinez-Hernandez

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Find, track, and gamify your campus study spots

An Android app that finds nearby study spots, auto-checks users in by location, tracks busyness via Firebase, and rewards study time with collectible stickers.

• Polished multi-screen UX with sorting and maps
• Location-based auto check-in and notifications
• Firebase-backed usage history and sticker rewards

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“The automatic check in feature was one of the strongest parts since it makes the experience feel seamless and practical instead of just another map app. The Firebase integration and busyness history were really impressive because they give the app real functionality beyond just l”

Joshua Studee

Nominee — Best Game Design

Siege the palace in a deep strategy showdown

Turn-based strategy game where players build units and structures to battle across a board and siege opposing palaces, including AI and four-player modes.

• Rich, well-defined strategy mechanics
• Multiple modes including AI and 4-player
• Polished UI with rules and unit info

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Very unique game, this was one of my favorite apps I've seen. I really love the idea, just wished the video was recorded as more of a screen record.”

Jun Yang

Nominee — Best Game Design

Make your phone earn your attention back

An alarm and focus app that locks your phone until you beat built-in mini games like Tic Tac Toe, Tetris, Eulerian trails, and a shooter.

• Multiple custom mini-games integrated smoothly
• Clever alarm and focus-lock mechanics
• Thoughtful game difficulty and UX design

MVP — · 19 hours · 1 review

“Turning an alarm clock into a mandatory gauntlet of mini-games like Eulerian Trail and Tetris is a brilliant, high-stakes way to force the brain into "focus mode" before you even have a chance to hit snooze.”

Kacie Moon

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

From messy mornings to data-driven outfit planning

A wardrobe management and outfit-planning app with mannequins, statistics, laundry tracking, and weather-based packing lists.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful wardrobe analytics and tracking
• Innovative mannequin-based outfit preview

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 5 reviews

“This is a very cool app that lets you see how a certain outfit you have in your head would look when put together. Particularly useful for individuals with a very large closet.”

Kenny Mei

Nominee — Best Game Design

Build, optimize, and analyze your virtual factory

An idle factory-tycoon game with profiles, upgradeable machines, materials, and analytics-driven simulations.

• Polished multi-profile game flow
• Rich upgrade and economy mechanics
• In-depth analytics and simulations

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“I like how you and Claude added analytics into the game, that almost seems like the main attraction. I've seen clicking-type games before but never firm analytics included.”

Krish Mellempudi

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Shortest paths across campus, tailored for students

A UIUC-focused campus navigation app using OpenStreetMap and Dijkstra’s algorithm to route students between buildings with schedules, favorites, and accessibility options.

• Complex routing with Dijkstra and OSM
• Rich feature set (schedule, favorites, settings)
• Thoughtful accessibility and customization options

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“I really liked how I could add my schedule and favorites, and later be able to access them to get my route. It would be so useful for me.”

Lara Ku

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Never be late changing classes on campus again

An app for UIUC students to plan class schedules by checking walking times between campus buildings and highlighting tight or impossible transitions.

• Polished schedule and connector UI
• Smart walking-time conflict detection
• Thoughtful, campus-specific feature set

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“This app felt really practical because it solves such a specific UIUC student problem that basically everyone here has experienced at some point. I especially liked the schedule feature with the color-coded walking warnings because it immediately tells you whether your schedule i”

Leqi Rong

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered personalized workouts from your own server

An AI-assisted workout planner that generates daily and weekly training plans based on user profile and preferences via a custom local API.

• Custom local server and API integration
• Personalized daily and weekly workout plans
• Exercise details with images and safety cues

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall, this is a very strong and practical project with real-world potential.”

Liam Hayes

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Find events, chat, and organize your social life

An event-discovery app with feeds, maps, profiles, DMs, and customizable themes for finding and organizing local activities.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Thoughtful UX with filters and theming
• Integrated messaging and event management

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 10 hours · 4 reviews

“I thought this app was really ambitious because it combined a lot of different systems into one project, like event discovery, messaging, profiles, filters, map integration, and theme customization.”

Logan Loebig

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Personalized workout plans that actually guide your week

A personalized workout planner that generates weekly exercise plans and goals based on user profile, tracks progress, and manages saved routines.

• Rich, multi-screen fitness workflow
• Detailed workout logging with PR tracking
• Goal-based calorie and progress calculations

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“You've got more features here than most student projects; this could honestly be a real app. Overall 10/10.”

Lucia Cuadro

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

Smart campus events hub with personalized discovery

Campus events app that centralizes events, personalizes a For You feed, and offers organizers analytics, RSVPs, and bookmarks.

• Polished multi-screen UX with many features
• Personalized For You algorithm using relevance scoring
• Organizer tools including editing and analytics

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The "For You" page algorithm is a great touch because it uses weighted scoring for majors and interests to help students cut through the noise of campus social media. It’s really impressive that you even thought to include an analytics dashboard for organizers.”

Luxi Chu

Nominee — Best Game Design

Save your money, save your pig farm

A budget tracker that gamifies saving with a virtual pig farm that thrives or dies based on staying within budget.

• Creative budget–game integration
• Complex interactive farm mechanics
• Clear budget tracking features

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“Absolutely love the drawings... the way that they all share the same features and design characteristics, I feel like you drew them yourselves, which adds so much to the app and makes it so beautiful and interesting in so many ways.”

Mia Bowers

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Guided phone lessons tailored for elderly learners

An instructional app that helps elderly users learn phone tasks through categorized, difficulty-labeled lessons with audio guidance.

• Thoughtful UX for elderly users
• Rich lesson metadata and filtering
• Audio read-aloud accessibility feature

MVP — · 24 hours · 5 reviews

“Mia's project stood out because it focused on a very real and often overlooked problem in a thoughtful and approachable way. The app was clearly designed with its target audience in mind, and features like large visuals, color coded categories, lesson difficulty indicators, estim”

Mohammed Abualsaud

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Smartly scoring and tracking your next opportunity

Android app that helps students find, score, and track internships and research opportunities based on their profile and academic year.

• Thoughtful matching-score logic and breakdown
• Well-designed tracker and calendar workflow
• Clear problem focus on freshmen opportunities

MVP ✓ · 9 challenges · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“The matching score with breakdown is the standout feature. Showing why a score is 10% vs. 100% (which skills missing, which year mismatched) turns a number into actionable feedback.”

Natan Przybylko

Nominee — Best Game Design

Master blackjack with stats-driven card counting training

An Android blackjack training app that teaches card counting, basic strategy, tracks stats, and includes a playable blackjack mode.

• Rich blackjack training feature set
• Detailed stats and session history visuals
• Integrated play mode using training concepts

MVP — · 23 hours · 0 reviews

Naysa Srivastava

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Accessible AAC with powerful caregiver customization

An AAC communication app with customizable boards and a secure caregiver mode for neurodivergent users.

• Thoughtful accessibility-focused design
• Secure, global caregiver settings system
• Customizable symbol boards and phrase bank

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 28 hours · 2 reviews

“I really love the goal of this app to take an idea that has already been used to help people and proven to be a success and make it more accessible to those who can't afford it. I was pleasantly surprised by the caregiver settings, but I love how they are designed to make the app”

Nina Drazenovic

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Making campus mental wellness feel like play

A gamified mental health app for college students with mood check-ins, mindfulness mini-games, XP-based growth, campus activities, and crisis support resources.

• Polished, cohesive UX and visual design
• Rich feature set with gamified progression
• Thoughtful mental health and safety focus

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“There are a lot of features that make the app really stand out. Furthermore, the helpline feature and the many other activities expands the utility of the app, and makes it more mental-health focused.”

Opal Ruangthammakit

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

Streamlining dorm maintenance with smart, real-time routing

Android app for dorm maintenance requests with role-based accounts, real-time status, and push notifications for students and staff.

• Robust real-time backend integration
• Thoughtful multi-role UX for students and staff
• Complex push notification pipeline

MVP ✓ · 6 challenges · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“The automatic complaint routing and real-time updates address a frustration everyone in the dorms has faced; the integration with cloud functions and end-to-end completeness are very impressive.”

Pio Rosell Del Aguila

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

From goals to gains: your personalized workout architect

A personalized workout builder that generates routines based on goals, equipment, preferences, and tracks history, progress, favorites, and schedules.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• High polish with themes and modes
• Personalized recommendations and feedback loops

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I was honestly very impressed by this app. The way that he had the workouts down to preferences showed a like button or a replacement button was also very smart and something I hadn’t incorporated into my app.”

Pranav Ramadas

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Guiding seniors through smartphones, one button at a time

An accessibility-focused Android assistant that overlays explanations and live guides on other apps to help seniors understand phone interfaces.

• Innovative overlay screen reader feature
• Custom AI-based button description system
• Accessibility options for seniors (text, contrast, audio)

MVP ✓ · 24 hours · 0 reviews

Purab Arora

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Visual crawler that catches broken paths first

An app that crawls a website, builds an interactive link graph, and flags broken paths for startups.

• Interactive visual link graph
• Automated broken-link detection
• Configurable layouts and styling

MVP ✓ · 7 challenges · 13 hours · 7 reviews

“I think this was actually a really great idea and I think it was executed really well. I think this is super useful and wouldn't be surprised if this won.”

Richa Chhadwa

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Matching Illini through verified, interest-based connections

Campus Connect helps UIUC students match, chat, and connect with others sharing similar interests using authenticated illinois.edu accounts.

• Robust auth and email verification
• Interest-based matching and discovery feed
• Real-time chat with notifications and blocking

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“The scope is closer to a real app than a class project. Auth + email verification + password reset + profile creation with photos + uniqueness-checked usernames + interest-based discovery + year filtering + block/unblock + friend requests with accept/decline + real-time messaging”

Rishab Navadgi

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

AI-powered companion for smarter diabetes management

An AI-powered diabetes management app that tracks glucose, analyzes trends, and offers personalized lifestyle and meal advice.

• Rich, well-structured feature set
• Deep AI integration with Cloud API
• Thoughtful UX for elderly and patients

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall this app feels like something that could actually be used in real life, not just a class project.”

Rohan Frijo Manjaly

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

One-stop AI-powered gym guide for UIUC lifters

A one-stop UIUC gym companion app that tracks machine usage, workouts, macros, and offers an AI fitness coach for ARC/CRCE users.

• Rich, cohesive feature set
• Real-time machine usage and routines
• Integrated AI fitness coach via API

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“Great work on creating an app that solves a lot of problems in UIUC face. I like the numerous features present like the AI fitness coach and telling everybody that you are using the machine.”

Rui Yang

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Grow your relationship by growing a musical pet

A shared music app where paired users grow a virtual pet by listening to Spotify together and chatting regularly.

• Cohesive, polished multi-screen experience
• Deep Spotify integration and pairing logic
• Creative virtual pet mechanic tied to behavior

MVP — · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Petitine is a remarkably creative concept that blends the mechanics of a virtual pet with the intimacy of shared music streaming, creating a truly unique "digital companion" for friends and couples.”

Rumtin Khorram

Nominee — Best Startup-Ready Fitness App

AI-powered gym companion with live machine availability

DimFlow is a gym companion app that uses AI to generate workout plans, track workouts and nutrition, and show real-time gym machine availability with rich guidance tools.

• Very broad, integrated feature set
• Polished UX with many working screens
• Nontrivial AI and data integration

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I was also impressed by how AI creates personalized workout plans based on the user’s lifestyle. The app supports not only workout-related feedback but also your nutritions and diet plan, which I think is very useful.”

Samantha Elarde

Nominee — Best Productivity and Wellness App

Beating decision paralysis with kinder, smarter to‑dos

An anti-overwhelm task app that randomizes tasks, tracks streaks and small wins, and adapts its tone and goals to users’ mental energy.

• Highly polished UX and interactions
• Thoughtful mental-health–aware features
• Rich settings and customization options

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall, your app was creative, emotionally aware, and clearly designed with real user struggles in mind.”

Siddh Chetan Gandhi

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

One campus, all events, one Local Loop

Local Loop aggregates campus events into a single app where students can discover, RSVP, track, and manage events with Firebase-backed accounts.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich event features and interactions
• Backend integration with Firebase

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Local Loop is an exceptionally well-thought-out platform that tackles the fragmented nature of campus event discovery with a sophisticated feature set usually seen in much more mature projects.”

Sofia Hryhorasz

Nominee — Best Campus Companion App

Turning campus study chaos into organized, live zones

An app that helps Illinois students discover, evaluate, and coordinate study spots on campus with live busyness, check-ins, groups, and shared collections.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful, robust state and data handling
• Clear, campus-focused use case

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I really like this project idea because it feels genuinely useful for students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I think it definitely has the potential to exceed expectations if fully developed.”

Sofia Ranallo

Nominee — Best Lifestyle Discovery App

From fridge photo to frittata with AI magic

A recipe book app with AI-powered fridge scanning, nutrition estimation, and social recipe sharing using local and cloud storage.

• Polished multi-feature recipe manager
• AI fridge scanner and nutrition estimator
• Integrates Room, Firebase Auth, and Firestore

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“This is really useful, great ui design and also convenient. The AI scanner is something really cool I have not see before.”

Tarun Srinivas

Nominee — Best Everyday Utility App

From fridge to plate, intelligently and on time

An intelligent pantry and meal planner app that tracks ingredients, suggests recipes, manages expiry dates, and supports cooking and meal planning.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich feature set with multiple APIs
• Thoughtful expiry and cook-mode workflows

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 7 reviews

“this project showcases impressive technical integration with the use of OpenFoods, and Spoonacular APIs to solve food waste. the inclusion of cook mode and automated expiry tracking showcases your deep empathy for users kitchen experience.”

Valeria Horta

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Finding affordable tech resources across Chicago

An app that helps Chicago users find affordable or loanable technology resources via an interactive map, filters, and detailed listings.

• Polished, multi-screen map and list UI
• Rich filtering and detail views with actions
• Clear focus on accessibility and usability

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 1 review

“I like how intuitive it is to use the app, especially the markers portion and being able to get info very quickly. It also is very helpful to the target audience.”

Vasilije Djuranovic

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

Digitizing the lab notebook with collaborative clarity

A lab notebook app with Supabase-backed auth, experiment management, templates, and collaborative commenting for scientific experiments.

• Real backend with Supabase auth and data
• Rich experiment management and templates
• Collaborative commenting for experiments

MVP — · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“LabNotebook solves a real, unglamorous problem — scientists losing track of experiments in messy notebooks — and does it well. The feature set (tagging, templates, multi-user commenting, Supabase backend) is impressively complete for a first app.”

Ved Patel

Nominee — Best Personal Fitness App

Level up your gym journey with smart tracking

A gym tracking app with workouts, splits, reminders, history, bodyweight charts, nutrition, and a unique strength-level ranking feature.

• Multiple integrated fitness features
• Unique strength ranking system
• Clear, structured demo walkthrough

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“It's got plenty of great features, such as workout scheduling and the split chooser, and overall, it looks to be a very useful app for anyone going to the gym.”

Xuanrui Zhang

Nominee — Best Research Workflow App

One search to tame your scattered research papers

An academic literature search app that unifies results from multiple databases with previews, saving, tagging, and citation tools.

• Polished multi-screen UX and interactions
• Unified model across three heterogeneous sources
• Thoughtful features like long-press previews and tagging

MVP — · 21 hours · 7 reviews

“The information is displayed in a very approachable way while still allowing for more technical uses through features such as quick long-press previews, saved collections with tags, and citation exporting. This allows the app to be a friendly interface while still serving as a se”

Xueyun Tian

Nominee — Best Game Companion Experience

Mood-based game picks powered by cloud AI

Android app that recommends games based on mood, player count, and AI-generated insights using cloud APIs.

• Creative mood-based recommendation concept
• Integration of cloud AI tagging/API
• Polished multi-screen browsing and favorites

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The mood-based browsing concept (six modes like "Tell Me a Story") is a creative and natural way to surface games — way more fun than a plain search bar.”

Yanbo Yang

Nominee — Best Immersive Interactive Experience

Imaginative AI companions with a focus on balance

An AI companion app with customizable characters, memory, shared companions, and features that encourage emotionally healthy, balanced usage.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Thoughtful healthy-usage design
• Customizable and shareable AI companions

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The memory feature is pretty cool and really suprised me since its must be pretty hard to implement.”

Yuexuan Zhang

Nominee — Best Assistive Impact App

Elder safety, reimagined across phone, watch, and cloud

A multi-module elder safety system with phone, caregiver, and Wear OS apps for daily check-ins, fall detection, and real-time monitoring via Firebase.

• Highly polished multi-device ecosystem
• Sophisticated fall detection and alert logic
• Strong testing and architectural discipline

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I liked how there is a streak counter, I believe it really allows the users to keep coming back. Having a medical history review for first responders was also a good idea since it helps optimise the emergency response.”

Yuhan Zhou

Nominee — Best Medical Health Tracking App

Gamified health tracking with pets, goals, and insights

A multi-screen health companion app that tracks wellness metrics, visualizes trends, and gamifies consistency with virtual pets and coins.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• Clever gamified health mechanics
• Clear explanation of features and goals

MVP — · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“My favorite part is the gamification system. Earning coins, buying virtual pets, and growing a garden make the app feel more fun and motivating.”

Aadi Chopra

A feature-packed, data-driven guide to campus travel

Campus Navigator helps UIUC students plan and compare campus routes using real-time bus data, maps, and personalized navigation features.

• Rich feature set and multi-screen UX
• Real-time CUMTD and Google Maps integration
• Thoughtful extras like stats, reminders, buddy system

MVP ✓ · 16 hours · 2 reviews

“I loved the realtime bus data integration and the route difficulty rating and the route comparisons.”

Aadi Dixit

Blueprints, categories, and payments in one marketplace

An app marketplace for sharing and purchasing technical drawing blueprints with categories, ads, and Stripe-based purchases.

• Multiple real-world API integrations
• Recommendation-style For You feed
• Thoughtful monetization and listing model

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“BlueprintShare most definitely exceeded my expectations since it was clear the student went beyond a basic app development by demonstrating real-world software engineering habits, concepts, and implementations.”

Aaditya Gupta

Smart, private budgeting with built-in AI insights

An Android personal finance app with local storage that tracks transactions, visualizes spending, and offers rule-based AI budgeting tips.

• Polished multi-screen UI with charts and forms
• Local SQLite storage with instant updates
• Rule-based AI insights and budgeting tools

MVP — · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“What stood out to me most was how realistic the app felt. Using a local SQLite database so all the financial data stays private on the device was a smart choice, and the automatic categorization feature made it feel like something people could actually use daily.”

Aaqil Riaz

AI-powered stock insights and alerts in your pocket

Android stock-tracking app combining finance data, charts, AI sentiment, and watchlist alerts to guide trading decisions.

• Integrates multiple finance APIs and AI
• Watchlist with price alerts and signals
• Top picks and screener with custom formula

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“The UI is great - the theme, the interactive graphs, etc. I was really impressed with the fact that the student actually came up with formulae - this is the definition of engaging with the topic you're building your application on.”

Aarav Bhatt

Gamified campus guide with live, colorful exploration

An interactive UIUC campus guide with searchable buildings, live busyness reports, gamified exploration, maps, favorites, and dark mode.

• Highly polished multi-screen UI
• Rich feature set with gamification
• Map, Firebase, and theming integration

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The awards, badges functionality, and leaderboard with friends are a really nice touch and help make the app not just useful but also engaging, giving users incentives to use the app and also compete with friends.”

Aaron Zhao

Serious student finance tracking with pro-level polish

An Android finance manager tailored for UIUC students with budgeting, goals, recurring bills, stats, and data export/import.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich finance features and goal tracking
• Thoughtful use of Room, WorkManager, migrations

MVP — · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Even though banking apps show some data like this as well, having an app specifically catered to UIUC with different filters and details like this would be really useful.”

Aayush Viswam

Deeply customizable hydration tracking for everyday use

A hydration tracking app with customizable drinks, goals, history insights, and rich settings for notifications and appearance.

• Highly customizable quick-add and custom drinks
• Rich settings: goals, notifications, themes, units
• History with mood and hydration insights

MVP — · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“ok the Siri integration to log drinks is actually so smart, I would use that all the time. The mood tracking + hydration connection is a really cool idea too, didn't expect that!”

Abhi Penaganti

Find answers, reviews, and tips across UIUC

An educational Q&A, course review, and tips app for UIUC students with accounts, profiles, and email-based two-factor authentication.

• Polished multi-tab UI with smooth flows
• Firebase-backed auth with 2FA email verification
• Rich course Q&A, reviews, and tips features

MVP — · 24 hours · 6 reviews

“Great project! I think that your whole project is pretty complete, has great design in UI and user interaction, and I really love all the additional features like 2FA you added to the app - really feels like using an actual professionally designed and marketed app.”

Abhishikth Ayyagari

Keeping small-scale fishermen safer on the sea

An app that helps fishermen, especially in developing countries, assess marine weather conditions and readiness before going out to sea.

• Clear safety-focused use case
• Thoughtful domain-specific thresholds
• Multiple coordinated safety features

MVP — · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“5 out of 5 — Fills a real gap in a purposeful way; could stand as an actual product”

Adena Biju

Balancing Canvas, life, and goals in one app

Balancer is a calendar and task app that imports Canvas assignments, categorizes goals, and gamifies balance with timers and badges.

• Canvas calendar integration workaround
• Multi-feature productivity suite (tasks, calendar, timer, badges)
• Priority and category-based goal balancing

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“This App is a remarkably comprehensive productivity tool, highlighted by Adina’s impressive technical resilience in bypassing university API restrictions through a clever calendar feed workaround.”

Adil Zaidi

Shining light on who really funds your reps

An accountability tracker that grades New York legislators based on campaign finance independence and links funding to voting issues.

• Highly polished UI and interaction design
• Integrates real public data and NY Senate API
• Clear, thoughtful civic engagement focus

MVP — · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“It's a really interesting idea, to try and grade every public representative in an area based on certain objective qualities.”

Alan Huang

Comprehensive fitness tracking with smart data handling

A fitness tracker app that logs workouts and food, calculates macros and calorie targets, and visualizes progress with templates, graphs, and a calendar using a Room database.

• Rich feature set across multiple menus
• Solid use of Room and async programming
• Thoughtful fitness logic and personalization

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“I love the details added to the app. It's personalized, and gives a plan according to the user's needs.”

Alekhya Dharna

Turn your daily habits into a Greek odyssey

A Greek-mythology-themed habit tracker that visualizes tasks on a 24-hour ring clock with gamified stats, reviews, and personalized quests.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Unique 24-hour ring clock visualization
• Cohesive Greek mythology gamification

MVP — · 24 hours · 4 reviews

“This is a brilliant idea, and a super creative app to see. I really love how the entire system of logging your habits work, and one thing that is super interesting is seeing the clock structure you have as the main function.”

Alex Gao

Verifying lost items from post to pickup

Campus lost-and-found app that manages item posts, claims, and coordinated meetups with verification.

• End-to-end claim and verification flow
• Multi-account interaction and activity tracking
• Thoughtful meetup coordination UX

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“Your app addresses a very real and common problem on campus, which is losing items or finding something that belongs to someone else with no easy way to return it. The verification system is especially well thought out.”

Alexia Atachao Bejar

Turning GPA tracking into a gamified AI assistant

An academic GPA tracker that gamifies grade tracking with AI-powered syllabus parsing, reminders, calendar, insights, and profile-based achievements.

• Polished multi-screen UX with charts and theming
• AI syllabus scan with LLM and JSON parsing
• Gamified goals, levels, and integrated reminders

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 31 hours · 4 reviews

“Despite this question of usefulness, this app overall is very solid in terms design, implementation, and features.”

Allen Feng

AI-powered dictionary tailored for global language learners

A multi-language AI-powered dictionary and translator that adapts explanations, examples, and synonyms for language learners with history tracking.

• Thoughtful learner-focused UX and settings
• AI-powered word vs sentence modes
• Multi-language support with history management

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“The app layout is incredibly intuitive and simple to use. This could be great for cases where quick translations are needed to communicate with someone on a personal level in the moment.”

Allen Tieng

Profiles and focus modes to break your doomscrolling

An Android productivity app that blocks selected apps using profiles, schedules, time limits, and focus modes to reduce phone usage.

• Rich blocking modes and profiles
• Thoughtful UX for resisting app overuse
• Solid use of Android accessibility features

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“Absence is a compelling productivity tool that goes beyond a simple blocker by incorporating thoughtful psychological friction, like the cooldown timer to prevent impulsive setting changes.”

Alyssa Bauer

Let your day plan itself, intelligently and beautifully

Daymap is an AI-powered daily planner that auto-generates personalized, minute-by-minute schedules from user habits, preferences, and calendar events.

• Highly polished UX and visual details
• Deep AI integration with robust prompt design
• Thoughtful handling of edge cases and states

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“The reset-without-wiping-data button for demos is genuinely thoughtful UX. The prompt engineering challenge she described shows she understood that AI integration is about what you tell the model, not just calling an API.”

Amber Wang

Turning UIUC course chaos into organized study flow

An all‑in‑one study planner for college students with course auto-complete, timers, habits, rewards, and exportable stats.

• Polished multi-page UX with cohesive features
• Uses real UIUC courses API for auto-complete
• Gamified rewards, stats, and habit tracking

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The app combines a lot of features together that you'd usually see in separate individual apps, and that makes it that much more useful. I really like the fact that you can organize your courses, daily schedule, habits, etc., all in one place.”

Anagh Sarda

Robust event coordination with smart waitlists and tickets

Event coordination app for attendees and coordinators with registration, payments, tickets, announcements, and robust Firestore-based waitlist handling.

• Polished dual-role UX (attendee/coordinator)
• Complex Firestore locking and waitlist logic
• Integrated payments and QR-based ticketing

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“The standout feature is definitely the "two-lock" logic for Firestore; addressing concurrency and race conditions in the waitlist shows a high level of engineering maturity beyond just building a functional UI.”

Ananya Kandaswamy Saravanakumar

Kanban boards that feed your ongoing goals

A customizable Kanban-style productivity app with login, theming, column editing, and a goal-tracking "goalbank" feature.

• Polished Kanban UX with customization
• Unique goalbank for tracking achievements
• Solid use of persistence and settings

MVP — · 17 hours · 6 reviews

“the custom column creation and priority tags worked really well and i was surprised by the unique goalbank feature to track long-term progress.”

Andrew Mazzio

Your Canvas-powered planner, grades, and tasks hub

An Android companion for Canvas that shows schedules, assignments, grades, and a built-in final grade calculator with task management.

• Deep Canvas-style integration and data views
• Rich feature set: tasks, grades, schedules
• Thoughtful UX: today view, priorities, reminders

MVP — · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“Very practical app that solves real student problems by organizing Canvas classes, assignments, grades, announcements, and reminders in one place. The final grade calculator is especially useful because it saves students from constantly using random websites.”

Angela Batcheller

Guiding gym newcomers with smart, adaptive workouts

FitTrack is a beginner-friendly gym app that builds workouts by muscle groups, tracks sessions, and adapts recommendations based on user feedback.

• Polished multi-screen UX with auth and profile
• Rich workout logic and adaptive recommendations
• Thoughtful features like streaks, history, and rest timer

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“I like how you can optimize the workouts for each different muscle group using the different features of the app. A feature in the app I really like is the recommended sets and reps feature, especially since a lot of new lifters are very hesitant about what they should do.”

Ankur Rao

Keeping families close with a private live feed

A private family photo and video sharing app with real-time feeds, reactions, prompts, and Supabase-backed accounts and groups.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Real-time Supabase backend with live updates
• Thoughtful family-focused features and presence system

MVP — · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“The different features that you added were very clever, like the idea of becoming a manager of a family. I think you also did a great job of replicating popular features among many successful apps that many would not think to add.”

Anna Carlson

Drag-and-drop your way to UIUC graduation

An engineering degree planner that loads UIUC curricula, tracks prerequisites and credits, and validates graduation readiness with a drag-and-drop schedule UI.

• Rich drag-and-drop planning interface
• Prerequisite and credit-load validation logic
• Supports multiple degrees and minors

MVP — · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I really liked the idea of mobile version of the self-service class registration feature, I think some highlights are the autofill for curriculum map to see if you are on track, as well as the ergonomic UI system of moving classes around as needed.”

Anshuman Reddy

Group plans made effortless with smart calendar overlap

Overlap is a group scheduling app that integrates with Google Calendar to find shared availability and coordinate events.

• Seamless Google Calendar integration
• Clear, privacy-preserving availability view
• Polished group workflow with codes and QR invites

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“Overall, I think the project definitely meets the expectations for a CS124 final project and feels like something people could actually use.”

Anthony Knebel

Local social network with surprisingly many features

A location-based social app with login, following, nearby feed, messaging, blocking, and image-embedded posts.

• Rich social feature set
• Location-aware feed and radius control
• Blocking, messaging, and image support

MVP — · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“This project stood out because it attempted to build a surprisingly complete location based social platform with features like following users, nearby discovery, messaging, comments, likes, blocking, image uploads, and map integration.”

Anthony Rodriguez

Diagnose, track, and rescue your houseplants

An app to track houseplants, log conditions, diagnose issues via an API, and manage watering schedules with room-based organization and stats.

• Polished multi-screen plant management UX
• Integrated plant-diagnosis API with confidence and advice
• Thoughtful stats, sorting, and room organization

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 18 hours · 2 reviews

“This is a very cool and creative app! I also really like the AI health diagnosis feature and the fact that it automatically updates the plant's condition!”

Anushka Wanjara

Connecting every UIUC class beyond the classroom

Class Connect is a course-based social platform for UIUC students to share resources, discuss classes, and coordinate events and listings.

• Rich, multi-feature class communities
• Thoughtful moderation and reporting tools
• Polished navigation and user experience

MVP — · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“Overall I think your app is very nice and has good goals. I think that it could be very useful as a student!”

Anushri Srivastava

Turn daily focus into streaks, stats, and rewards

An Android productivity app that helps students plan tasks, track streaks, and earn rewards with a goal-based, motivational system.

• Polished multi-screen UX with consistent layouts
• Sophisticated streak and goal reward logic
• Motivational design with stats, rewards, and confetti

MVP — · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“It is a great way to help plan each day wiht fun things like the streak and confetti. It gives the user satisfaction and acknowledgement for completing the task that day.”

Anyi Wang

Smart recipes tailored to your diet and week

An AI-powered recipe app that generates meals based on diet type, calorie goals, allergies, and supports saving and planning recipes for the week.

• Clear diet and allergy settings
• Macro breakdown and step-by-step cook mode
• Weekly meal planning with saved recipes

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 25 hours · 5 reviews

“Overall, I love the app and the idea behind it. It has a large target audience and caters to all dietary restrictions.”

Ari Aks

MVP — · 19 hours · 5 reviews

“Real-time collaborative drawing is a legitimately hard technical challenge, and pulling it off in a CS 124 project is impressive. The feature set is also more thoughtful than it first appears.”

Arnav Pillay

Learning Android under tight weekly time limits

Android app project with unspecified features and limited demonstrated progress.

• Some desired features implemented
• Student reflected on time constraints
• Learned basic Android Studio usage

MVP — · 23 hours · 4 reviews

“This project felt very practical and well-designed for everyday use. I especially liked how the features focused on solving real user problems instead of just showcasing technology.”

Arry Fu

Your entire student schedule, right on your wallpaper

Android app for students that turns parsed weekly and one-time schedules into an auto-updating phone wallpaper using Firebase-backed accounts.

• Clever wallpaper-based schedule display
• Flexible natural-language-like event entry
• Cloud-backed accounts with Firebase

MVP — · 19 hours · 3 reviews

“The natural language input system is a standout feature; letting users type things like "short" or "long" to auto-fill duration shows real thoughtfulness about user experience.”

Arturo Martinez

Track every rep, routine, and streak in AMP

A cross-device workout tracker with accounts, routines, exercise logging, and calendar-based streak tracking.

• Account system with cloud persistence
• Calendar and streak visualization
• Structured workout and set logging

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 19 hours · 3 reviews

“I think this app is very well designed and feels like something people would actually use in real life. The idea of tracking workouts, sets, reps, and weight, along with saving progress across devices, makes it feel like a complete and practical fitness app.”

August Harris

Illini-only marketplace for books, gear, and subleases

An Illini-only marketplace app for buying and selling used course materials and subleases with integrated payments and shipping.

• Well-scoped marketplace concept
• Integrates Stripe, Firebase, and shipping APIs
• Thoughtful features for student use cases

MVP — · 18 hours · 7 reviews

“The combination of marketplace features, UIUC email verification, housing/sublease support, and payment integration makes it feel like a product with real usefulness.”

Bahar Kuran

Share recipes, plan meals, and play food games

A social food-sharing app where users post recipes with rich metadata, manage meal plans and shopping lists, and play ingredient-based guessing games.

• Rich, detailed post creation workflow
• Many interconnected features and screens
• Creative food guessing game concept

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“It was cool how you got a user system to work using claude. Using that data for the games was really creative.”

Baoyi Zhang

Hydration tracking with satisfying visual feedback

A water reminder app that tracks daily intake, shows history, and provides visual feedback via a color-changing progress circle.

• Polished, smooth UI focus
• Nice visual feedback with color-changing circle
• Clear, practical feature set

MVP ✓ · 10 challenges · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“The implementation of the dynamic tracking circle, which changes color as the user approaches their goal, is a sophisticated touch that transforms a simple data-entry task into an engaging, interactive experience.”

Blake Marunde

From class schedule to social campus ecosystem

A campus planner app that imports class schedules, maps events, supports social features, and gamifies attendance with badges and leaderboards.

• Very broad feature set and workflows
• Schedule import and calendar integration
• Maps, heatmap, and social/gamified features

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“This project stood out because of the sheer amount of functionality and systems integrated into a single platform. The schedule importing system and campus map integration were especially impressive because they made the app feel grounded in a realistic student workflow.”

Brian Mo

Smart course planning tailored to your UIUC journey

An app that recommends UIUC courses based on completed requirements, interests, and degree progress, with search, saving, and planning features.

• Rich, multi-screen course planning workflow
• Integrates scraped course data and requirements
• Clear focus on real student scheduling needs

MVP — · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“This study block planner is a highly practical productivity tool that effectively tackles the challenge of student accountability. It successfully transforms complex logic into a user-friendly interface designed to build lasting academic habits.”

Burton Wang

Personalized screen-time coaching with rewards and insight

An Android screen-time tracker with goals, streaks, achievements, rewards, and personalized goal recommendations based on usage data.

• Highly polished multi-screen UI and theming
• Deep integration with Android screen time APIs
• Rich goal, reward, and recommendation system

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“This app stood out to me because it solves a real life problem in a way that feels practical and useful. The app was also designed very well, the app feels complete and engaging.”

Chang Liu

Turning scattered study time into structured progress

A student-focused study time tracker with subjects, assignments, planning, and analytics features.

• Rich feature set for study management
• Background timer and manual session logging
• Clear focus on student productivity needs

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“The first thing that came to my mind was just how many people would actually use this. It has such a broad audience, almost every college student could benefit from it.”

Charlie Rice

Build timelines across years, millennia, and beyond

An app for creating, organizing, and viewing custom timelines with flexible date systems including BCE and large-scale time spans.

• Flexible custom date system (CE/BCE/kilo-years)
• Timeline duplication and section/event organization
• Thoughtful timeline search and icon/color customization

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 20 hours · 1 review

“I love the idea of this app, but I would've wanted to see a few more features. It looks like you had a great implementation in mind for the app, but most of it wasn't implemented.”

Cheryl Tsai

Turn doomscrolling breaks into real-world self-care

An Android self-care app that schedules background timers and notifications to prompt randomized offline activities as screen-time breaks.

• Robust timer and alarm integration
• Editable, randomized self-care activity list
• Clear, thoughtful explanation of purpose

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“The idea of not only reminding people to take breaks, but also removing the “what should I do instead?” decision by giving a suggested activity was really smart. I think that small detail made the app feel much more intentional and useful than a normal timer app.”

Chris Orange

Cute pop-up shop hub with sales tracking dreams

An app for posting, discovering, and tracking pop-up shop events with profiles, maps, and sales logging for small vendors.

• Cute, animated visual design
• Multiple screens and flows planned
• Thoughtful sales-tracking concept

MVP ✓ · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“Not only is it unique but it's also very useful and I can see it going into market. I love the visuals, and the way you interact is quite intuitive.”

Chuanjun Li

From tests to tables: planning meets real places

Android study planner with test list, calendar view, and GPS-based study location recommendations.

• Polished multi-screen UX
• Integrated calendar visualization
• GPS-based location recommendations

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“The "Study Location" feature is a standout innovation, using GPS to suggest cafes or libraries based on the user's intended study duration. This shows a sophisticated shift from digital organization to real-world application.”

Cindy Wang

Turning budgeting into a rewarding daily habit

An expense-tracking app that uses budgets, streaks, insights, and rewards to motivate users to stay within their monthly spending limits.

• Highly polished, feature-rich implementation
• Thoughtful behavioral design (streaks, rewards, insights)
• Robust analytics and category-level controls

MVP — · 13 hours · 2 reviews

“Budget Reward is an impressively polished application that excels by bridging the gap between financial utility and behavioral psychology.”

Claire Liu

Smart photo cleanup with hashing-powered similarity groups

An Android app that scans your photos for exact and similar duplicates, groups them, and helps you review and delete them to save storage.

• Highly polished UI and UX
• Nontrivial hashing and similarity logic
• Clear, thoughtful feature explanation

MVP — · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“I am really impressed by the quality of the app. The similar photo matching system seems to be very accurate and helps user actual save storage without worrying about deleting all their photos.”

Coby Thammavong

Turning study sessions into structured, trackable habits

A study habit planner that schedules study blocks, tracks streaks and stats, and syncs with calendar apps using various study techniques.

• Rich feature set and workflows
• Calendar import/export and sync
• Thoughtful habit-tracking and stats

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“It goes beyond basic scheduling by incorporating complex features like Google Calendar sync, .ics file imports, and integrated study techniques (such as Pomodoro). It is a practical, feature-rich application that effectively solves a real student problem.”

Coco Liu

Turning big assignments into focused, trackable steps

An assignment planner and focus tracker that breaks large tasks into AI-generated steps, tracks progress, and visualizes study patterns.

• Polished multi-screen UX and interactions
• AI-powered step breakdown and planning
• Thoughtful focus tracking and stats design

MVP — · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“Focus Step is a well thought out productivity app that actually understands how students work, the energy check-in and step by step breakdown of assignments are touches that most todo apps miss.”

Colin Kinerk

Connecting communities to small businesses, one review away

An app that connects local consumers with small businesses through profiles, reviews, maps, and owner tools for feedback and analytics.

• Multiple roles with tailored features
• Rich business profiles and feedback system
• Thoughtful UX for maps and discovery

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Great idea to help local businesses, it is really something practical. The tri-level account structure including owner, consumer, and guest is quite intelligent and the map functionality, which is powered by Google Maps, is a good example of ambitious thinking.”

Daksh Bhaskar

Matching people by ideas, not profile pictures

An opinion-based matching app that ranks anonymous users by answer similarity and opens chats when selections are mutual.

• Cohesive end-to-end matching flow
• Weighted similarity algorithm with real logic
• Thoughtful lifecycle and state management

MVP — · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“The "weekend unlock" cycle is a brilliant way to build anticipation, and your similarity algorithm is a huge standout because focusing on divisive questions shows you really understand how to measure human compatibility.”

Dallas Forgy

Turning every gym session into structured, smart progress

A comprehensive gym companion app for tracking workouts, recovery, hydration, and progress with customizable templates and analytics.

• Rich, well-integrated feature set
• Thoughtful recovery and strain tracking
• Polished multi-screen workout and progress flows

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The "body strain" tracker is a brilliant addition because it turns recovery into a data-driven metric, helping users decide whether they should hit a heavy session or stick to the suggested stretches.”

Dan Haidau

Fact-check and AI-detect your feeds in seconds

Android app that uploads social media content, uses Google and Anthropic APIs to fact-check it, detect AI, and store and filter past checks.

• Polished multi-screen UI with settings and history
• Integrates multiple external AI/Google APIs
• Clear focus on fact-checking and AI detection

MVP — · 17 hours · 3 reviews

“With more sophisticated training on detecting misinformation, this would be something super useful. Well done and one of the better ideas I've seen.”

Daniel Liu

Turning complex constraints into a balanced schedule

Smart Schedule is a task planner that auto-generates balanced schedules from user-defined tasks, constraints, and recurring events.

• Nontrivial greedy scheduling algorithm
• Rich task metadata and constraints
• Multi-screen planner with stats and summaries

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The scheduler algorithm is really cool. It handles priority and deadline for all assignments and work.”

Daniel Shen

Know your footprint, compare, and act greener

An app that lets users log activities to track their carbon, water, and electricity footprint, view breakdowns, and compare against others.

• Multiple resource types tracked with history
• Visual breakdown via pie charts and tables
• Comparison to countries, individuals, corporations

MVP — · 19 hours · 6 reviews

“I like how many stats there are, especially the comparison features between different footprints on the pie chart and other people. Very cool idea and nice execution!”

Danny Klonecki

Personalized degree planning powered by real UIUC data

An individualized degree planner app that visualizes and tracks the user’s CS minor requirements using UIUC course data.

• Uses real UIUC course/API data
• Practical, personally tailored degree planner
• Thoughtful scope reduction and iteration

MVP — · 19 hours · 3 reviews

“As for your app, I wish this was what exactly the Degree Audit looked like, it's so much easier to read and the fact that it seems to list all of the classes in UIUC and what majors they are a part of in one place would be so useful if it existed in the actual UIUC infrastructure”

Desar Mulla

Customizable national exam prep with community questions

An exam-prep app for a national CPP test with customizable practice sessions, question bank, and admin-managed practice exams plus user-contributed questions.

• Rich question filtering and custom mixes
• Full admin workflow for questions and exams
• Thoughtful tracking of performance and history

MVP — · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“I really like the design of the app; it's executed very well, and there are plenty of features, such as the student being able to ask questions and the admin being able to answer them, set up exams, make new questions of their own, etc., that make the app even more useful.”

Dev Gandhi

Turning messy DARS reports into clear four-year plans

An Android course planner that parses a student’s DARS report to generate a personalized multi-semester degree plan with GPA estimates and scheduling tools.

• Personalized DARS-based planning
• Rich course detail and GPA estimation
• Interactive multi-semester schedule editing

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“This is one of the most personally useful and technically ambitious apps in the batch. Parsing a real DARS report to generate a personalized four-year degree plan — accounting for AP credits, study abroad, minors, and gen eds — is genuinely hard, and the fact that it works is imp”

Diego Diaz

Hydration goals gamified for busy college students

A hydration reminder app where students set water goals, log drinks, and earn achievements for meeting their daily intake.

• Clean, polished UI focus
• Goal tracking with progress and achievements
• Flexible drink logging with custom amounts

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I liked how clean and polished the UI looked, especially since hydration tracking is a simple concept but you made it feel engaging with the achievements and customization options.”

Eason Ong

Campus navigation meets club discovery in one app

Campus Nav helps students find campus buildings, view hours, navigate between locations, and explore clubs with stored details and schedules.

• Multiple integrated features and screens
• Uses database and MTD bus API
• Polished filters, settings, and navigation UI

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“I definitely really enjoyed this app and found it extremely useful/applicable to my day to day life. If I was a freshman once again... this app would have greatly increased my odds of finding less-busy study spots and getting to class on time.”

Edmond Mei

From one meal to many, every split tracked

An Android app to split bills among friends, track who owes what, and manage past transactions with profiles and saved restaurants.

• Rich transaction history and editing features
• Thoughtful UX for recurring items and profiles
• Comprehensive bill splitting and tracking workflow

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I found the tax screen depending on your place really unique and nice. I also loved how user friendly it is, very accessible.”

Edward Tang

Smart flight tracking with data-driven buy timing

Skywatch tracks flight prices over time and uses an advisor to recommend the best time to buy tickets for specific routes and dates.

• Rich, configurable tracking features
• Integrated price history graphs and advisor
• Thoughtful notifications and settings design

MVP — · 19 hours · 3 reviews

“The combination of price tracking, historical graphs, and an AI-generated “buy now vs wait” recommendation makes the app feel sophisticated and effective.”

Eissa AlHaddad AlHashmi

Forecast any time series, then play Flappy Stats

An Android time-series forecasting app that uploads CSVs, runs multiple forecasting algorithms, visualizes predictions with uncertainty, and includes history, live tracking, and a mini-game.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Multiple forecasting algorithms and visualizations
• Thoughtful extras like history, live tracker, mini-game

MVP — · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“I like that the forecasting process was explained clearly, with the algorithm descriptions and uncertainty bands on the graph. The live tracker and prediction history made the app feel complete.”

Eric Chan

Visualize your semester’s grade trajectory in real time

An Android grade tracker that manages courses, assignments, weighted grades, and visual grade trends with custom charts and utilities like GPA and search.

• Custom animated grade trend chart
• Rich feature set beyond core tracking
• Thoughtful, polished UI with sorting and theming

MVP — · 23 hours · 4 reviews

“I was surprised and impressed by the GPA predictor and the graphs made without use of libraries. The graphs are not only useful in showing whether or not you're improving in a class, but also times in the semester and assignments that you struggled with and need to review.”

Erik Hendriex

Study smarter with tracked focus, music, and community

A study companion app that tracks focus sessions, phone pickups, deadlines, notes, and community playlists using Firebase and Spotify integration.

• Polished multi-screen UX with stats and streaks
• Firebase-backed accounts and data persistence
• Spotify-linked playlists and social Q&A features

MVP — · 24 hours · 5 reviews

“This app stood out because it combined a lot of productivity tools into one app. I especially liked the phone pickup tracker, i thought that was a clever way to directly measure distractions, on top of time studying.”

Ethan Lee

From craving to cooking: smart recipes and macros

An AI-powered recipe finder that generates recipes from names or photos, tracks macros, supports substitutions, meal planning, and grocery lists.

• Rich, polished multi-screen UX
• AI integration for recipes and substitutions
• Macros, meal planning, and grocery list features

MVP — · 23 hours · 3 reviews

“This is a really good cooking app - recommends recipes AND helps you be more organized in the kitchen. As someone who really enjoys cooking, I liked so many features: the "substitute" feature, the grocery list feature, time taken for certain steps, allowing you to "remix the reci”

Evan Chen

Smart, community-powered lost and found for pets

Android app for community-driven lost and found pets with maps, scanning, messaging, and smart proximity-based notifications.

• Polished multi-tab UI with maps and feeds
• Context-aware notification logic and settings
• Thoughtful use of AI assistance with clear understanding

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The proximity-based notification system is a standout feature because it respects the user’s context with quiet hours and radius settings, making it feel like a polished tool rather than just a noisy background app.”

Felix Fang

Gamifying smarter recycling with guidance and goals

EcoSort helps users correctly dispose of waste with quizzes, tips, search, maps, and progress tracking.

• Multiple well-integrated core features
• Motivational streaks and notifications
• Clear environmental focus and use case

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 0 reviews

Finn Benjamin

All-in-one planner for classes, tasks, and calories

A student planner app that combines weekly class scheduling, reminders with notifications, and a calorie-tracking meal log into one dashboard.

• Polished multi-tab UI with overview home screen
• Integrated schedule, reminders, and calorie tracker
• Thoughtful details like sorting and progress visuals

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“This student planner does a good job combining several useful daily tools into one app: class schedules, reminders, notifications, and calorie tracking. I liked how the home screen pulls everything together so users can quickly see upcoming classes, pending reminders, and meal pr”

Firdavs Boliev

Reuniting lost stuff with owners, campus-wide

Campus-wide UIUC-only lost-and-found app with geolocation search, duplicate detection, and verified student accounts.

• Production-level polish and UX
• Sophisticated geo + Firebase integration
• Exceptionally clear, compelling narrative

MVP ✓ · 19 hours · 6 reviews

“This is an app that I honestly want to actually exist, because I would absolutely use it a lot. I like the ability to not only report your items missing, but also let others know if you've found missing items.”

Gabriel Barcelos Wersom

Smarter dining: live menus and crowd predictions

An app that shows live and predicted crowding and menus for U of I dining halls using the university’s menu API and user check-ins.

• Real U of I dining menu API integration
• Crowd prediction model based on time and pulses
• Multi-screen app with profiles and check-ins

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“I think the idea for this app is pretty cool! The idea of having an app that will predict how crowded the dining halls can be was my favorite feature that was implemented.”

Gavin Powell

Your schedule, stats, and friends in one calendar

A Firebase-backed calendar app with widget, multi-view scheduling, customization, and social calendar comparison features.

• Polished multi-view calendar UI
• Firebase auth and data integration
• Planned social calendar comparison

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“I really liked the "friends" feature that you can add people and then see how both of your calendars align and when you both have free time. I feel that's such a useful feature that ive never seen on any calendar app.”

Gennaro Mure

Fusion 360 tutoring with progress-gated AI grading

An Android CAD tutoring app that mimics the CS 124 site, with lessons, YouTube-based tutorials, quizzes, progress tracking, and AI-graded Fusion 360 drawing uploads.

• Thoughtful lesson and quiz structure
• Progress gating based on quiz performance
• Clear integration of videos and practice tasks

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“I honestly think there’s no doubt this app deserved the 'App That Best Honors the Spirit of CS 124' award. The app is so complete; everything from the lessons and quizzes to the settings page is well-polished.”

Gigi Zhong

Reimagining IlliniApp as a focused daily companion

An all-in-one student productivity app integrating schedule, Canvas tasks, planning, campus tools, and personalization for UIUC students.

• Broad, integrated feature set
• Thoughtful student-focused UX and flows
• Clear replacement vision for existing IlliniApp

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“It's something I would actually use every day as a student. The mood check-in and daily planner together is so smart, and the dining hall crowdedness feature would've saved me so many times this semester lol.”

Gracie Li

Track grades, forecast GPA, and never miss deadlines

An Android grade tracker that manages courses, calculates current grades and estimated GPA, and supports reminders, PDF export, and dark mode.

• Multiple course and GPA management features
• Reminders and PDF export integration
• Light/dark mode and editable grading weights

MVP — · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“This app is perfect for students as it calculates grades, trends, semester GPA, and also gives reminders. Furthermore, it gives you grade drop alerts which really helps plan academics well.”

Gus Kietsuksthit

From workout logs to streak-saving gym motivator

Android gym tracker app for logging workouts, viewing stats, using calculators, and receiving motivational reminders.

• Rich feature set and multiple tools
• Polished dashboards and history views
• Clever use of alarms for reminders

MVP — · 21 hours · 8 reviews

“What makes this project stand out is its practical focus on a lifter’s actual needs—specifically the plate calculator and the exercise library, which solve immediate problems in the weight room.”

Haley Dao

Connecting Illini through shared hobbies and meetups

An Illini-only hobby meetup app for posting, joining, and managing campus activities with profiles, filters, and dark mode.

• Polished multi-screen UI with theming
• Rich activity posting and validation logic
• Well-integrated Firebase auth and data flows

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“It would be really fun to use this app to do side quests like trying out new hobbies and meeting new people in the process. The functionality to post an activity and join an activity is really well designed to make it easy for people to see the necessary details for an activity.”

Hali Chen

Gamified phishing drills to outsmart online scammers

Android app that trains users to avoid online scams via educational modules, quizzes, achievements, and real scheduled phishing-style test emails.

• Clever real-email phishing simulation mechanic
• Rich feature set with gamified training
• Solid Firestore-backed account and streak system

MVP — · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“This app stands out for its practical approach to digital safety by moving beyond theory into actual practice. It is the most likely project to genuinely protect users from real-world phishing threats.”

Hayden Berens

Turn your real life into an RPG quest

A gamified life-RPG task manager where completing quests earns gold and XP to customize and level up your character.

• Polished multi-screen RPG-style UI
• Rich task hierarchy and job/quest systems
• Thoughtful motivational mechanics and presets

MVP ✓ · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“Turning a to-do list into a full RPG with character customization, stats, a job board, side quests, and a shop is a genuinely clever design — it takes the core problem (motivation) and wraps it in something actually fun to interact with.”

Henry Suk

AI-powered study schedules tailored to your real life

An AI-powered study planner that generates personalized schedules from tasks, habits, fixed events, and Google Classroom assignments.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Gemini API–driven schedule generation
• Thoughtful student-focused UX (habits, reports, profile)

MVP — · 23 hours · 1 review

“Cool idea! I liked how the app made use of Gemini, which was something unique amongst the many apps that I've seen in this course.”

Hrithvik Pullagurla

From syllabus to study stats in one app

StudySync is a study planner that tracks classes, assignments, grades, and study time with timers, flashcards, and syllabus import.

• Rich, cohesive feature set
• Thoughtful UX with priorities and tags
• Advanced tools like flashcards and syllabus import

MVP ✓ · 8 challenges · 19 hours · 2 reviews

“I love being able to import your study notes to have the app make flashcards for you.”

Indra Nandana Sanjaya

Shared household stock, synced and under control

A household inventory app with shared cloud-synced lists, thresholds, and shopping list automation.

• Cloud-shared household lists
• Automatic low-stock shopping list
• Role-based household management

MVP — · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“Nice app design, and something really useful for a family. I really appreciate the ability to create home groups and have multiple family members join together and have the data also shared among a household.”

Irene Kostov

Structured routines, gentle nudges, and cloud-backed progress

An ADHD-focused routine maker and tracker with timers, streaks, customization, and cloud backup.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Rich routine and task logic with focus mode
• Firebase cloud backup and notifications

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“This routine tracker is an exceptionally polished and purposeful application, demonstrating a deep empathy for its target audience through thoughtful features like the "Focus Mode" and "Essential" task toggles.”

Isabelle Confessori

Social cooking meets organized, interactive recipes

Whisk is a social recipe-sharing app with feeds, search, saved folders, and step-by-step cooking views backed by Firebase.

• Polished multi-screen social UI
• Rich recipe creation and cooking flow
• Backend integration with Firebase

MVP — · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“This is absolutely my favorite app idea that I've seen so far! The only thing I'd want to change about this app is the fact that it isn't already on my phone!”

Jake Sesi

Four-year plans and schedules, beautifully under control

An academic planning app for building four‑year plans, generating schedules, and tracking course progress with Gen Ed search and drag‑and‑drop UI.

• Highly polished multi-page UI
• Complex scheduling and planning features
• Accurate Gen Ed and course search logic

MVP — · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“I liked that the app had multiple different ways to view the schedule, whether by which classes you were taking, what time all the classes were per semester, and the schedule generator that helped you keep classes from overlapping.”

Jamison Stockrahm

From job post to scheduled gig in one app

A two-sided labor marketplace app connecting job posters with nearby freelance workers, including job posting, messaging, scheduling, and tutorials.

• End-to-end job workflow with messaging
• Role-specific tutorials and help system
• Search, filters, and robust settings/options

MVP — · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“I really like how you implemented a dual-tutorial system for both laborers and hirers, as it makes the complex workflow clearer for new users. I was also impressed by the direct messaging and notification system.”

Jaydon Kachappilly

Turn your ideas into matching museum masterpieces

Art Match lets users find matching artworks from the Art Institute of Chicago by uploading images or text descriptions, with gallery, bookmarks, and customization features.

• Polished, feature-rich UI and UX
• Integrates Azure vision and real art API
• Flexible search by image or text vectors

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“The image to painting matching is a cool idea and it actually works well, pulling data from the Art Institute of Chicago is a nice touch. Overall very impressed by the work put in!”

Jeff Xu

Connecting nearby collaborators through ideas, not job titles

An app for idea-based collaboration with messaging, posts, and location-based project matching.

• Multi-feature collaboration platform
• Location-based project ranking with privacy
• Thoughtful data-layer design using Room/SQLite

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 25 hours · 4 reviews

“I find this app really cool and something a lot of people can find really useful. A really cool feature this app has is the fact that you can search and upload ideas that you want to build near you.”

Jeremy Sung

Turning your shower routine into a gamified schedule

An eco-focused shower multi-timer that breaks your shower into customizable sections with visual, haptic, and spoken feedback plus stats and achievements.

• Polished multi-screen UX with animations
• Rich feedback: visuals, haptics, text-to-speech
• Stats, history, and achievements for engagement

MVP — · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“The way you used visual urgency—like the red pulsing text and haptic feedback in those final 10 seconds—is a brilliant way to solve the "time blindness" that happens in the shower.”

Jerry Wang

Finding campus parking, before you start circling

Campus parking helper app with multilingual UI, list and map views, user-updated availability, and enforcement-aware status.

• Rich feature set and polish
• Google Maps integration with navigation
• Multilingual and theming support

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I loved how relatable this problem is and the live enforcement status is so crucial. The google maps integration with navigation was smart and the multilingual support was a good accessibility choice.”

Jesse Jiang

Turning tomorrow’s schedule into tonight’s perfect bedtime

ClockIn is a sleep optimization app that calculates personalized bedtimes from your next-day schedule, commute, and routine, with logs, insights, and a visual mascot.

• Thoughtful bedtime calculation engine
• Multi-tab app with logs and insights
• API integration and animated mascot polish

MVP — · 25 hours · 6 reviews

“The sleep calculator algorithm is extremely well done, and being able to calculate backwards starting from your first appointment, considering commute, morning activities, snoozing buffer time, and sleep onset latency is such an intelligent concept.”

Jiayi Zhong

Crowdsourcing animal sightings with smart, streamlined design

Android app for reporting and exploring community wild and stray animal sightings on a shared, real-time map.

• Real-time shared map with filters and search
• Integrates reverse geocoding and Wikipedia REST APIs
• Thoughtful, streamlined UX and product decisions

MVP — · 18 hours · 6 reviews

“The live-updating map with filters for wild vs stray makes the app immediately usable. Another surprising component is the combination of real-time updates and community mapping making the app feel collaborative and accurate.”

Jimmy Donovan

Macros, money, and meals tailored for campus life

A macro-tracking app for college students with goals, dining hall presets, and weekly history analytics.

• Thoughtful college-focused feature set
• Goal calculator and macro split logic
• Saved dining hall items and weekly summaries

MVP — · 13 hours · 3 reviews

“The app is also goal-focused and seems to really help users work towards their specific goals for their physical health by helping them keep track of their nutrition.”

Jing Wang

Track your time by category, simply and persistently

A simple time-tracking Android app that records categorized sessions and stores them in a database for later review.

• Clear core time-tracking workflow
• Uses a Room-style database for history
• Thoughtful future extension ideas

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Everyone can benefit from learning how they spend their time so this app spans multiple demographics. I also like that this app goes beyond a simple timer and introduces a data analysis aspect that plays into the understand your habits and time usage purpose of the app.”

Jing Zhou

From fridge to recipe to cart, seamlessly

Virtual fridge app that tracks ingredients, applies preferences, and finds recipes using multiple APIs with shopping list integration.

• Polished multi-screen UX with filters and dialogs
• Dual-recipe-API integration with fallback logic
• Thoughtful recipe–shopping list–fridge workflow

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I think this is a really cool idea, its a simple app that catalogs everything. I think the most valuable thing is adding recipes and seeing what you have and don't have in your fridge.”

Jinjia Cai

Track workouts, meals, and weekly fitness plans

A fitness and nutrition tracking app with workouts, food logs, and planning features backed by a Room database.

• Uses Room for structured local storage
• Multiple fitness tracking features and screens
• Shows planned architecture and UI design

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The app provides lots of organized categories of stats to be tracked. I was surprised that it provided fitness challenges, but found it to be a really cool aspect of the app.”

John Goebel

Track every climb, visualize your progress over time

A climbing log app that tracks sessions, routes, and long-term progress with stats and photos.

• Polished multi-screen UX with dark/light mode
• Rich progress analytics and history views
• Thoughtful session and photo-based logging

MVP — · 19 hours · 3 reviews

“The "significant V-level" milestone tracker is a fantastic motivational tool because climbing is all about those breakthrough moments, and seeing exactly when you hit a new grade helps visualize long-term growth.”

Johnny Wu

Block distractions, pet cats, and pass your finals

FocusBlock is a productivity app with scheduling, task tracking, focus timers that block selected apps, and a motivational mascot system.

• Polished multi-screen UX with animations
• Implements real app blocking via AccessibilityService
• Motivational mascot with unlockable animated states

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The mascot is a very fun addition to the app; it would make people want to use it and complete their tasks more, and the app-blocking one is great for maintaining focus.”

Jood Alduhaileb

Shared study playlists tailored to every campus spot

An app for UIUC students to join venue-specific shared study playlists, add songs, and filter by genre.

• Clear, focused use case for UIUC study spots
• Venue-specific shared queues with likes and listens
• Genre filtering for long, shared playlists

MVP — · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“I really like how the shared playlist system is tied to specific UIUC study spots, as it creates a genuine sense of campus community through music. I was also impressed by the genre filter feature which makes it a lot easier to find the right music without scrolling through a lis”

Joseph Elkins

Dining hall data meets detailed fitness tracking

UIUC-focused nutrition and exercise tracker that logs dining hall meals, workouts, water intake, and goals.

• Rich, domain-specific nutrition data
• Integrated workout, water, and food tracking
• Well-targeted to UIUC dining hall users

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“Joseph built a very practical and polished app that clearly focused on solving a real student problem. Features like calorie tracking, workout volume logging, hydration tracking, and dietary filtering all worked together cohesively and showed strong product thinking.”

Joshua Gerfen

Heatmaps and live keys for smarter room booking

An Android app that tracks room key availability using Firebase, with student and clerk views, notifications, filters, and historical availability heatmaps.

• Polished dual-role UI with live updates
• Firebase-backed data and notifications
• Innovative historical availability heatmap

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“The app really solved a real student problem, very practical and thoughtful. The live room availability, notification and filtering made the app really useful, the heat map was especially impressive.”

Justin Ji

Capture, categorize, and annotate your wrong questions

An app to categorize, store, and annotate wrong questions with photos, voice notes, and emojis using a local Room database.

• Uses Room for local persistence
• Multiple input modes (photo, voice, emoji)
• Subject-based organization of questions

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“I think the idea of compiling questions about academics that you've been struggling with is quite interesting, and an app where I can store all of them in one place would be quite convenient in helping me revise them for exams or just to aid my learning.”

Kahlil Young

Wake up, level up: adaptive puzzles meet alarms

An alarm app that uses adaptive puzzle sessions, coins, power-ups, and a shop to motivate users to wake up and maintain streaks.

• Polished multi-screen UX with onboarding
• Dynamic difficulty and streak-based progression
• Gamified economy with shop and mystery boxes

MVP — · 26 hours · 2 reviews

“I really liked that you had the idea of prompting the user to play a game in order to reset the alarm, and I feel that you can introduce a "serial snooze" feature which makes people who consistently snooze have gradually harder and harder puzzles each day, to motivate them and fo”

Katharina Graman

Visualizing your training, diet, sleep, and mood

A holistic training app that tracks workouts, diet, sleep, and mood with visual analytics and scoring.

• Polished, thoughtful multi-screen UI
• Integrates nutrition API and macro tracking
• Rich visualizations for mood and performance

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“The idea of converting subjective inputs such as mood and training “feeling” into measurable trends is very cool. This does a great job of painting the bigger picture with respect to one’s health.”

Kayden Morales

From recipe URL to weekly meal plan, seamlessly

An all-in-one recipe manager that imports recipes from URLs, scales ingredients, generates grocery lists, and supports weekly meal planning.

• Robust feature set for home cooks
• Clever recipe scaling and parsing logic
• Integrated grocery list and meal planner

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“The idea behind the app is pretty unique, and I feel it'd be really useful for someone who cooks regularly. The execution is very good as well, and I especially like the scaling factor and the grocery list feature (particularly in the way it separates the list by dish).”

Keertana Dhulipalla

Frictionless daily thoughts and tasks, right from home

A combined quick-notes and task manager app with stats, customization, and a home-screen widget for frictionless daily use.

• Polished multi-screen UX with animations and widget
• Rich task and journaling features with search and stats
• Thoughtful, low-friction lifestyle workflow design

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“Something that I really liked was the statistics page because I thought it was very impressive and have never thought of having tasks be something that can be celebrated like that.”

Keith Chassin

Optimizing every board, from cut plan to reuse

An app for woodworkers that optimizes board cuts, tracks waste reuse, estimates costs, and offers joinery references.

• Sophisticated cut layout and waste tracking
• Multiple calculators and domain-specific logic
• Clear, domain-aware woodworking UX

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“This app creatively helps woodworkers reduce waste and save money. The visual cut diagrams are impressive and highly useful.”

Khue Nguyen

Job hunting tailored to international students’ visas

An international-student-focused job search app that tracks applications, computes OPT timelines, and surfaces visa-friendly job recommendations.

• Well-structured multi-screen UX
• Domain-specific logic for OPT timelines
• Clear niche: international student job search

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 1 review

“I really liked how useful this app is. I am not international, but I have so many international friends who would love this app and how it could benefit them.”

Krish Sundareswar

Find the best dish at any restaurant, fast

An app for browsing restaurant menus by city, adding restaurants, and viewing and posting dish-specific reviews with cloud sync and map integration.

• Rich use of external APIs and services
• Well-structured multi-level navigation (city→restaurant→dish)
• Thoughtful map and location integration

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“What surprised me with the app was how quickly it was able to find locations for restaurants and how easy it was for the user to input their review in.”

Kyle Chow

Forging daily market insight through structured reading

An entrepreneurship-focused news app that tracks daily reading goals across economics, industry, and op-ed articles using live news APIs and progress streaks.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX
• Integrates live news API and filtering
• Clear goal-tracking and progress visualization

MVP — · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“This app is based off the user's experience that for someone to be successful they have to be well read, and so makes it easy for the user to stay on top of things. I am really impressed with how it interacts so well with the news API.”

Leah Chapski

One-stop opportunity hub for every Illini interest

An opportunity hub app for UIUC listing clubs, sports, jobs, internships, and more with filtering, favorites, and detailed info pages.

• Polished multi-tab UI with consistent cards
• Rich detail pages with sections and media
• Filtering, preferences, and favorites features

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 21 hours · 8 reviews

“This "Opportunity Hub" is a great way to centralize the massive UIUC ecosystem, and the color-coded categorization makes the navigation feel intuitive for students. Finalizing the project with tests and a linter is a professional touch that ensures the app isn't just visually fun”

Leshan Xu

From training plans to tactics for volleyball diehards

Android app that builds personalized volleyball training, nutrition plans, and generates team-specific game tactics.

• Rich domain-specific volleyball logic
• Multiple integrated features and flows
• Detailed tactics generation per player role

MVP — · 14 hours · 3 reviews

“The shift from a standard fitness tracker to a full-blown game tactics generator is a great example of following your interests to build something unique, especially with specific logic tailored to every position on the court.”

Liam Arena

Simple, customizable nutrition tracking for everyday use

A customizable nutrition app that calculates daily macro goals, supports meal planning, shopping lists, and daily food logging.

• Clean, simple nutrition workflow
• Rich settings and customization options
• Integrated meal plan and shopping list

MVP ✓ · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“The UI is so clean, yet it is completely finished. I can tell the user experience would be super smooth and natural.”

Liam Feehan

Turn your humming into editable MIDI tracks

An app that converts hummed or recorded audio into MIDI, lets you lightly edit notes, and exports to a DAW.

• Nontrivial audio-to-MIDI processing
• Functional piano-roll style editor
• Thoughtful pitch smoothing and noise handling

MVP ✓ · 15 hours · 4 reviews

“As someone who always hums melodies and then forgets them, having an app that turns those into MIDI for a DAW like Logic is actually super useful. The fact that you got the Yin algorithm working to smooth out the notes is impressive.”

Liam Patel

Real-time study session matchmaking for UIUC students

An Android bulletin-board app where UIUC students post and find real-time study sessions with filtering and expiring posts.

• Polished, complete multi-screen UX
• Real-time Firestore data and filtering
• Clear, well-structured demo explanation

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“The idea is simple, but it actually solves something students deal with every day. The auto-expiring posts and live filtering are nice touches that show you thought about the real user experience, not just getting it to work.”

Lily Ding

Wake up your brain before you hit snooze

NutAlert is a smart alarm clock app with challenge-based dismiss, sleep tools, stats, and multilingual support to help users actually wake up.

• Polished, feature-rich alarm and sleep suite
• Creative multi-mode dismiss challenge system
• Handles modern Android alarms and background limits

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“I think the app idea itself is quite interesting; the concept of forcing yourself to use cognitive functions right out of bed is potentially really smart. However, I do think this is a very well-sculpted app that probably beats out mine.”

Logan Wright

Research-based brain games with an in-app coach

Brain Boost is a mental fitness app for older adults featuring multiple cognitive games, wellness check-ins, accessibility settings, and an in-app chatbot powered by a cloud API.

• Thoughtful accessibility for older users
• Multiple research-based cognitive games
• Clever cloud API use for games and chatbot

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“Brain Boost is a really well-thought-out app. The target audience is specific, targeting older people who want to keep their brains active, and every feature reflects that.”

Lorenzo Wu

Instantly sanity-check your headlines before you share

An offline Android app that analyzes news headlines or claims for emotional language and warning signs, giving trust ratings, explanations, and history-based stats.

• Real-time offline text analysis (Quickscanner)
• Rich multi-screen UX with stats and challenges
• Clear, user-focused explanation of features

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 7 reviews

“My favorite app! I think this is the most useful one I've seen so far. I really appreciate it because of its attention to urgency.”

Luca Henerey

All your academic life, organized in one place

An academic planner app that centralizes assignments, schedules, courses, grades, GPA, and grade trends, with optional Canvas API integration.

• Integrated assignments, schedule, and grades in one app
• Canvas API and GPA/grade trend features
• Polished multi-screen dashboard with stats and filters

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 18 hours · 5 reviews

“The filters make prioritizing important assignments quick and easy. The ability to import Canvas assignments using the API makes this app a real option for students everywhere.”

Lynn Zhao

Project details unclear from provided materials

Insufficient information provided to determine what the app does.

• N/A – app not described

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 18 hours · 3 reviews

“The app idea is practical and the interface looks clean. I liked the daily goals and check-in feature because they make the app feel useful.”

Martin Foertsch

Coordinating hangouts with polished, friend-first design

An availability-sharing app where friend groups coordinate who’s free to hang out.

• Polished, cohesive UI with theming
• Rich quality-of-life features for groups
• Thoughtful status and availability flows

MVP — · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“This project stood out because it focused on solving a very relatable everyday problem in a simple and user friendly way. The core idea of helping friend groups quickly see who is available to hang out felt practical, lightweight, and genuinely useful for college students.”

Maryam Sellami

Design your perfect UIUC schedule, AI included

An AI-assisted UIUC smart scheduler that builds ideal class schedules using filters, constraints, and saved accounts.

• Rich scheduling constraints and filters
• Integrated AI course advisor feature
• Account-based saved schedules and wishlist

MVP — · 18 hours · 3 reviews

“I love how it can track your credit hours and you can make it specific to what times you want and don't want for class. I love how for the GenED they know exactly which ones you need and what fits with the schedule, making registration for class much easier.”

Max Wang

Gamified team time tracking with smart geofencing

A team-focused time tracking app with leaderboards, points, geofenced reminders, and exportable workspace stats.

• Rich team-oriented feature set
• Configurable points and leaderboard system
• Geofenced auto clock-in/out reminders

MVP — · 18 hours · 7 reviews

“I like the team-based idea because it goes beyond a basic personal timer and focuses on collaboration and accountability. The leaderboard and point system are creative to make time tracking more motivating.”

Melana Benavides

Mapping and motivating civic engagement in CU

CU Connect helps Champaign-Urbana users discover, track, and log community volunteering and political events via maps and profiles.

• Integrated Google Maps with clustered event pins
• Hour logging with badges and status tracking
• Multiple tabs for explore, community, and profile

MVP — · 21 hours · 8 reviews

“CU Connect stands out for its genuine civic purpose — building an app around volunteering and local political events shows real commitment to the community beyond just the assignment. The Google Maps API integration with pins and clustering is technically impressive, and the hour”

Michael Kozuch

Daily side quests to nudge you outside comfort zones

SideQuest is a daily quest app that gives users customizable challenges, tracks streaks and stats, and stores photo-logged memories of completed quests.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX and theming
• Rich feature set with stats, streaks, and photos
• Thoughtful, motivating interaction design

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I loved the idea of the app in which users can take side quests to be more adventurous. I found the app to be very interesting, especially for college students to branch out more and be offline.”

Nadia Figueroa

Global news, auto-translated, tracked, and personalized

A multilingual news reader that aggregates global sources, auto-translates, tracks reading habits, and supports offline reading and sharing.

• Highly polished, feature-rich implementation
• Complex news, translation, and analytics logic
• Clear, thoughtful UX for global news reading

MVP — · 19 hours · 5 reviews

“I think the app is genuinely very useful for people all around the world. The summarization features and how long it takes to read is a really good user feature and improves experience.”

Nanditha Ram

Scrapbook your feelings with prompts and mood insights

A journaling and scrapbooking app with mood tracking, dynamic prompts, future letters, themes, and data export.

• Rich, cohesive feature set
• Polished, aesthetic mood and journal UI
• Thoughtful reflection and self‑tracking tools

MVP — · 21 hours · 2 reviews

“Nanditha's app goes beyond a simple journaling app. The scrapbook feature and being able to write letters to yourself in the future are unique and interest aspects of the app that let users do more than use this app for regular journaling.”

Natalia Dobrilovic

Gamified recycling with a campus bin GPS map

An app that helps users find nearby trash and recycling bins on a GPS map, track usage, and gamifies eco-friendly behavior with a virtual cat.

• Custom GPS map with curated bin data
• Gamified eco-behavior via Tamagotchi-style cat
• User reporting and recycling guide features

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 6 reviews

“I love the GPS feature and the way it was implemented is very well done. I love the usability and the pet feature to act as a motivation, I also really like the report a bin feature to add data.”

Navya Dixit

Finding your campus flow: spots, schedule, and focus

Flowstate is a study-planning app for UIUC students that suggests campus study spots, schedules assignments around classes, and includes focus tools like timers and app blocking.

• Rich, integrated feature set
• Complex scheduling and assignment logic
• Thoughtful study-focused UX for UIUC context

MVP — · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“Flowstate stands out for its deep integration of student-specific needs, moving beyond a simple timer to create a holistic study ecosystem.”

Neal Chaayanath

Enthusiastic start to an unfinished Android app

An unfinished Android app with unclear functionality and incomplete implementation.

• Shows enthusiasm for development
• Attempted beyond basic tutorial scope

MVP — · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“I like the concept for this app especially since it is so relevant to the world we live in.”

Neil Mody-Deshmukh

All your classes and routes in one place

Campus Navigator helps students manage class schedules and get directions, travel times, and weather-based guidance between classes.

• Integrated directions and travel-time logic
• Schedule search and multi-tab organization
• Uses external APIs for maps and weather

MVP — · 19 hours · 6 reviews

“I think this is the most useful app I have seen yet. It looks so good and really is the one app I would use the most on a daily basis.”

Niki Rajaram

Plan, share, and connect around study abroad trips

An app that generates personalized study-abroad trip itineraries and lets students share, save, and connect with friends around their travel plans.

• Rich itinerary customization and editing
• Social features with profiles and messaging
• Thoughtful UI touches like loading tips and aura theme

MVP — · 24 hours · 5 reviews

“The itinerary feature seemed especially well-thought out, and the overall aesthetic and UI were very cohesive.”

Nitya Krishnakumar

From first lift to PRs: LiftLog tracks it all

LiftLog is a weightlifting and cardio tracker with customizable exercises, activity rings, PR tracking graphs, templates, and a plate calculator.

• Highly polished, feature-rich workout tracker
• Thoughtful UX: rings, graphs, templates, notes
• Clever plate calculator and PR celebration

MVP — · 18 hours · 3 reviews

“I like how this is a workout app that isn't intimidating towards beginners. Also I'm a big fan of the graphs, because visualizing data is really important for people to internalize their progress.”

Noah Eischen

Mapping power outages with seniors in mind

An outage-reporting app with a map that clusters reports, severity levels, reminders, and senior-friendly design for tracking local power outages.

• Polished multi-screen UX with map and clustering
• Severity-based icons and reminder notifications
• Thoughtful design for older, less tech-savvy users

MVP — · 21 hours · 1 review

“I think it's a good way to report issues with power and see if other people have the same issue in the same location.”

Noah Polus

Turning your reading habit into a digital bookshelf

A reading logger app that tracks books, sessions, streaks, and shows logged days on a simple calendar view.

• Nice bookshelf-style UI concept
• Reading streak and session logging
• Calendar view of reading activity

MVP — · 21 hours · 1 review

“I like the logging system - tracking with a streak indicator would motivate the user to not break their streak and read every day. The shelf view vs stack view adds a really nice touch - replicates a library, which is on theme.”

Paloma Turner

Verified campus meetups with built-in group chat

Campus Connect helps Illinois students find, join, and organize campus activities with verified accounts, filtered feeds, and group chats.

• Polished login and email verification flow
• Rich activity feed with filters and channels
• Integrated group chat for each activity

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“The Illinois only email verification is a smart safety call, and the filtering paired with how many different types of activity there are is super cool and interesting.”

Patawee Wangthumboon

Scan, sort, and gamify smarter recycling habits

An AI-powered recycling assistant that scans items or text input to classify trash into customizable bins with usage rewards.

• AI image recognition for trash classification
• Customizable bin categories and logic
• Gamified rewards and usage statistics

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The custom bin configuration is a fantastic idea because it makes the app useful in the real world—like at a mall or a different city—where recycling rules and bin types change constantly.”

Paul-Gerard Candelaria

Escalating alarms that won’t let you procrastinate

Relentless is a reminder app with escalating alarms, categories, calendar view, and a gamified pet that levels up as you complete tasks.

• Polished multi-screen UX with calendar and categories
• Complex escalating alarm and notification system
• Gamified pet mechanic tied to task completion

MVP — · 27 hours · 4 reviews

“The alarm feature looks like it would encourage someone to begin a task and the varying levels of alarm seem to be a well-executed feature. The pet was surprising, but I like how it adds a fun twist to an app that is supposed to bother you with alarms.”

Pengjie Zhou

Turning your daily habits into wellness insights

A wellness tracking app that scores daily physical, mental, and social habits, shows trends, and offers personalized tips and reminders.

• Polished multi-screen UI with charts and history
• Thoughtful wellness scoring and feedback system
• Settings, goals, reminders, and sharing features

MVP ✓ · 7 challenges · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“I like how the app tracks different parts of wellness, not just sleep. The scoring and history features make it useful and easy to understand.”

Peter Walewender

Reddit for career advice from recent grads

A Reddit-style Q&A and discussion app for college students and recent grads to share career, internship, and job advice.

• Rich, Reddit-like feature set
• Thoughtful, real-world use case
• Multiple polished screens and flows

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“However, the fact he went for it to be more of a Reddit style, question based app was great. This is something I think is really important because first generation students probably have a lot of troube with something like this.”

Phoebe Peng

Smart alarms meet sleep tracking and insights

An AI-assisted smart alarm clock that tracks sleep sessions, logs sleep data, and offers configurable alarms with dismissal tasks and insights.

• Rich sleep dashboard and metrics
• Configurable recurring alarms with tasks
• Thoughtful main screen UI design

MVP — · 19 hours · 5 reviews

“The math-problem dismissal task is a creative touch that sets it apart from a basic alarm app, and the sleep dashboard packing in averages, streaks, goals, and trends gives the app real depth beyond just setting alarms.”

Porscha Henderson

Daily study methods, personalized by your own data

A study-methods app that surfaces daily techniques, tracks sessions and ratings, and visualizes personalized stats and progress.

• Polished multi-screen UI with onboarding and settings
• Rich stats and data visualization features
• Personalized study method recommendations

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“I really like the idea of the app; it seems like a very efficient way to get people not only to learn better, but also to have fun while learning by learning new techniques and looking at their progression and stats along the way.”

Prisha Patel

UIUC ride-sharing that actually feels production-ready

A polished UIUC-specific ride-sharing app where students can post, discover, filter, and manage shared trips with real-time backend integration.

• Highly polished, production-like UI/UX
• Rich filtering and trip management features
• Clear, compelling, well-structured demo

MVP — · 23 hours · 3 reviews

“The app feels polished and genuinely useful, with a clear end-to-end ride-sharing flow. The filtering system and UIUC-focused design make it feel like more than a class project.”

Qatrin Andina

Skip the line: smarter Illini dining on mobile

Campus food ordering app for Illini cafes and dining halls with menus, filters, cart, maps, and order tracking.

• Polished multi-tab UI with dark mode
• Rich ordering flow and payment options
• Integrated maps and dietary filters

MVP ✓ · 19 hours · 4 reviews

“Illini Eats is a very practical app that solves a real campus problem: getting food quickly between classes. The cafe menus, dietary filters, nutrition info, cart, order tracking, maps, and balance page make it feel like a complete and useful campus food-ordering app.”

Qinglang Zhang

Never step outside unprepared for the weather again

WeatherWear is a weather-based outfit advisor with scheduled daily notifications and offline support.

• Polished multi-screen UX and notifications
• Uses live weather API and offline caching
• Sophisticated outfit recommendation logic

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The daily outfit recommendation combined with a reminder system uses weather data to provide helpful lifestyle and everyday advice. Including factors such as wind, humidity, UV, and personal comfort makes the suggestion engine feel more thoughtful than a traditional weather app.”

Raghav Verma

A clean, ad-free gym tracker for serious lifters

A gym tracking app that logs workouts, tracks streaks and weight, and provides calculators and stats for lifters.

• Rich, well-integrated fitness feature set
• Polished workout logging and history views
• Thoughtful tools for serious lifters

MVP — · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“I think the addition of the plate calculator and max estimates is what sets this app apart from other gym trackers.”

Rainal Pasha

Anonymous campus confessions with rich social features

An anonymous UIUC-focused confession and discussion app with posts, comments, topics, communities, messaging, profiles, achievements, and theming.

• Rich feature set and interactions
• Thoughtful anonymity and community design
• Profile, karma, and achievement systems

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“I love the concept of building off of reddit to make a more agreeable user experience by first making each post anonymous. I also appreciate the features of different tabs like topics for allowing users to enter conversations that align with their interests in the larger communit”

Ray Huang

Serious science, simplified for everyone to explore

An app for browsing recent scientific articles with AI-generated simplified summaries, bookmarking, and customizable search settings.

• Polished multi-screen UX with tutorial and settings
• Integrates external article and AI summary APIs
• Thoughtful accessibility via simplification and warnings

MVP — · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“I would say that this idea has great potential, and is a great application of AI being used to help our daily lives and the work of people that is not traditionally related to AI.”

Raymond Zhang

Mapping every crack and pothole for tiny wheels

Micromaps lets micromobility riders report, share, and confirm road hazards on a live, color-coded map with account and ride-tracking features.

• Polished, thoughtful map-based UX
• Clever hazard segment snapping and fallbacks
• Clear, compelling explanation of design choices

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 17 hours · 2 reviews

“Micromaps is probably the most technically impressive project here. Color coded hazard lines that snap to road geometry, GPS ride tracking, community confirmations, and graceful offline fallbacks all in one app is a lot to pull off.”

Rehan Hashim

Unfinished but aiming to tackle real problems

An unfinished app intended to address an overlooked real-world issue using APIs and AI agents.

• Addresses overlooked real-world issue
• Uses external APIs and AI agents

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I loved the idea of enhancing a prompt to send to AI because an important part of using AI is learning how to prompt properly so that all required information is gathered.”

Rishan Shah

Track, gamify, and shrink your daily carbon footprint

A carbon footprint tracker that logs transport, food, and energy use, computes emissions, and visualizes progress with goals, offsets, and achievements.

• Highly polished multi-screen UI with many features
• Rich domain logic using EPA-based carbon calculations
• Gamified insights, achievements, and streaks

MVP — · 23 hours · 4 reviews

“The Footprint app stands out for its sophisticated data modeling and commitment to scientific accuracy, particularly through the integration of EPA emission factors for transport, food, and energy.”

Robert Batzer

Track your pantry and budget in one place

A household inventory app that tracks items, stock status, and a weekly budget with search, sorting, and customization options.

• Polished UI with status colors and dark mode
• Integrated budget tracking and restock history
• Search and sort across containers/items

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“An incredibly practical and well-structured app. The container/item organization is straightforward, and the budget tool that resets itself on a weekly basis is extremely useful.”

Rocky Chan

Connecting your mood to your productivity, seamlessly

An Android mental health and productivity app combining mood tracking, journaling, calendar trends, and a full tasks/goals/habits system with local storage.

• Integrated mood and productivity features
• Calendar-based trends and achievements
• Room-backed tasks, goals, and habits

MVP — · 22 hours · 8 reviews

“Features like multiple mood entries per day, mood-based calendar visualization, productivity integration with habits/goals/tasks, focus sessions, achievement tracking, and journaling all worked together cohesively definitely made the app feel thoughtful.”

Ross Kimme

Smarter Course Explorer with GPA and Gen Ed optimization

An enhanced UIUC Course Explorer and Gen Ed planner app that pulls live data, shows GPA distributions, prerequisite trees, and computes optimal Gen Ed combinations.

• Live integration with course data and Course Explorer
• GPA distributions and recursive prerequisite tree views
• Backtracking set-cover Gen Ed planner with multiple combos

MVP — · 17 hours · 3 reviews

“The prerequisite tree visualization and the Gen Ed planner using a backtracking algorithm were probably the most technically interesting parts of the project.”

Rushil Patil

Institutional-grade financial insight for small businesses

An AI-powered financial advisor app that helps small business owners track financial health, manage balance sheets, and explore valuation and M&A scenarios.

• Very ambitious financial feature set
• Thoughtful multi-page financial UX
• Clear linkage to real business needs

MVP — · 24 hours · 6 reviews

“I think its a good idea and it can encourage people to start their own businesses without too much worries of managing finances. There are a lot of AI features and I think the integration with that in the app is great.”

Saanvi Arora

Smarter carbon tracking with automated, habit-friendly logging

An Android carbon footprint tracker with cloud sync, analytics, and smart activity recognition to streamline logging and encourage sustainable habits.

• Polished multi-screen UX with rich visualizations
• Firebase auth and Room with migrations
• Activity Recognition and AI meal detection integration

MVP — · 24 hours · 6 reviews

“I think this was honestly the best project idea I have seen so far out of the ones I reviewed because it combines a very practical real-world problem with strong technical implementation and thoughtful design. Overall, I think this project clearly exceeds the expectations of a Un”

Saanvi Prasad

Spin, cook, and collect your own digital cookbook

A highly featured personal cookbook app with recipe management, filters, meal planning, a randomizer wheel, and guided step-by-step cooking.

• Extremely polished, production-like UI
• Rich feature set and interactions
• Thoughtful cooking workflow and gamification

MVP — · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“This app transforms the cooking experience from a chore into a gamified journey by expertly mapping the entire user path from "I’m hungry" to "clean up." By integrating a "spin-the-wheel" feature to eliminate choice paralysis and a dynamic servings calculator to automate ingredie”

Sarah Dudley

From inspiration to completion: crafts, tracked beautifully

A multi-tab craft project tracker that manages goals, inspiration, in-progress, and completed projects with linked workflows.

• Polished multi-tab UI with fragments
• Thoughtful workflows linking inspiration to projects
• Practical features encouraging real-world use

MVP ✓ · 26 hours · 3 reviews

“A polished craft tracker built with clear personal investment. The standout feature is the project pipeline: linking inspiration pins through to completed projects gives it a continuity most trackers lack.”

Shane Onixt

Daily history facts meet coins, badges, and crashes

A daily history fact app with coins, badges, and user profiles that currently crashes and runs slowly.

• Large history fact dataset
• Gamified coins and badges system
• Multi-screen design with profile and history

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 6 reviews

“The daily notification system, coin rewards, streak bonuses, and character/badge progression made it feel more like a game, which is a smart way to keep users engaged over time.”

Shengda Dong

Custom strategies to conquer your task backlog

An offline task scheduler that ranks tasks using customizable priority strategies and dynamic scoring.

• Dynamic priority-based task reordering
• Customizable strategy pattern for scoring
• History, overview, and restore workflows

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I liked how the app automatically reordered tasks based on priorities like difficulty, importance, and confidence level. That made it feel much more realistic and personalized compared to most scheduler apps.”

Sherry Xu

Turning streaks into personal records worth protecting

A polished habit-tracking app with streaks, stats, mood tracking, notifications, and motivational record-based hints.

• Highly polished, production-like experience
• Rich feature set with thoughtful analytics
• Clear, motivating streak-record hint system

MVP — · 27 hours · 1 review

“This habit tracker feels polished and genuinely motivating, with streaks, progress bars, habit templates, mood tracking, stats, notifications, and a yearly heat map.”

Shreya Haran

Smarter habit tracking with adaptive reminders and rewards

Habit Pulse is a habit-tracking app with streaks, badges, calendar views, and smart goal-based notifications.

• Polished multi-screen UX with animations
• Smart, goal-aware notification system
• Badges, streaks, and calendar analytics

MVP — · 19 hours · 5 reviews

“Habit Pulse is a strong self-improvement app with habit tracking, streaks, progress updates, badges, animations, and a calendar view. The smarter notification system is a standout feature because it reacts to the user’s progress instead of just sending generic reminders.”

Siddharth Manguluru

Journaling with friends, on your terms every day

A social journaling app with privacy controls, comments, streaks, and daily reminder notifications using Firebase.

• Polished multi-screen UI with social feed
• Granular privacy and sharing controls
• Daily notifications and streak/history features

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 19 hours · 2 reviews

“I liked the balance between social interaction and privacy, especially the feature where friends can see that you posted without seeing the actual content.”

Sienna Kornhaber

From couch to calories: your full-day fitness hub

A comprehensive calorie, nutrition, and fitness tracker that logs food, exercise, weight trends, and suggests recipes based on remaining daily calories.

• Highly polished, multi-screen UX
• Rich nutrition and fitness feature set
• External recipe data with complex filtering

MVP — · 18 hours · 3 reviews

“This project stood out because it felt extremely complete and polished across a wide range of interconnected features. The amount of functionality integrated into the app was genuinely impressive and made it feel much closer to a real commercial product than a simple class projec”

Siyu Xue

Translation that actually asks what you meant

ClearSpeak is an AI-powered translation app focused on accuracy, context, and regional nuance for travel and professional use.

• Context-aware, ambiguity-resolving translation
• Regional and user-specific language profiles
• Multiple modes (travel, professional, medical)

MVP ✓ · 5 challenges · 20 hours · 2 reviews

“ClearSpeak is a fresh take on translation, asking the user what they meant instead of just spitting out an output is a simple idea that makes a real difference. The regional dialect awareness and context modes for medical vs professional use are smart touches.”

Somil Bose

Finding rides between Champaign and Chicago, simplified

IlliniRide is a ride-sharing app for Illinois students to post, find, and request rides between Champaign and Chicago.

• Thoughtful student-focused problem domain
• Rich ride filtering and sorting options
• Developer mode with bot chat simulation

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 18 hours · 3 reviews

“The "Developer Mode" is a really smart addition for a student project because it allows you to demonstrate the full chat and booking flow using bots since you don't have a live user base yet.”

Sophia To

Finding your campus room, floor by floor

An indoor campus navigator that gives room-specific directions and floorplan views for selected campus buildings.

• Thoughtful real-world use case
• Dynamic directions by entrance and floor
• Map-based UI with accessibility toggle

MVP ✓ · 1 challenge · 18 hours · 4 reviews

“From personal experience of trying to navigate the Armory, this would be extremely helpful!!! So to save others the trouble of getting lost in mazes please actually make this official!!”

Sophie Fader

Smart, time-based workouts with goals and history

Workout app that generates time-based routines, tracks history, streaks, goals, and custom exercises with favorites and summaries.

• Highly polished multi-screen workflow
• Rich workout tracking and history features
• Thoughtful extras like undo, favorites, goals

MVP — · 22 hours · 1 review

“The app demonstrates an impressive range of features, particularly the logic behind the "Random Workout" generator and the "Undo" functionality. The integration of a history tracker, favorites system, and goal-setting provides a comprehensive set of tools.”

Stuti Tripathy

Gamifying hydration habits for busy students

A hydration-tracking app that gamifies staying healthy for college students.

• Relatable, practical problem choice
• Gamified approach to hydration
• Motivated to extend beyond class

MVP — · 7 hours · 1 review

“Very cool and fitting UI.”

Suhaani Singh

A creative app idea with unclear execution

An Android app with unspecified features for creatives.

• Customizable by the creator
• Independent Android Studio setup attempt

MVP — · 21 hours · 3 reviews

“This is cool and actually something that I've wanted for a while - as someone who enjoys playing the piano, this is something easy that I might actually use.”

Suhas Palla

One-stop campus planner for classes, buses, and breaks

Campus navigator for UIUC that imports class schedules, integrates weather and MTD data, and suggests routes and break-time activities.

• Polished multi-tab UI with calendar views
• ICS import and manual schedule editing
• Weather-aware routing and break suggestions

MVP — · 18 hours · 2 reviews

“I would have loved to have this app when I first came to campus, so it definitely solves a problem many people face. It feels well-made and a lot of thought was put in, like the fact users can see what to do in between class.”

Sunjingtao Zhu

AI-powered planner that keeps every deadline in check

Clasp is a student-focused deadline manager with calendar, AI chat, news, and import/export features.

• Rich, multi-feature deadline management
• Integrated AI assistant for deadlines
• Calendar import/export and customization

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“this is a great student tool that integrates deadline tracking with unique features like study hour estimation and grade recording. inclusion of AI chat for quick info and ability to import and export calendars from outlook and gmail is a strong practical tool.”

Thomas Isaac

Voice-powered task manager packed with productivity tools

A voice-controlled task manager with prioritization, calendar, metrics, and focus tools like Pomodoro and random tasks.

• Rich feature set beyond core tasks
• Voice input and notifications concept
• Prioritization, calendar, and metrics integration

MVP — · 17 hours · 2 reviews

“The voice input idea makes it stand out from a regular task manager, and the organization tools seem genuinely useful for staying on top of school and personal tasks.”

Thomas Zhang

Flawlessly boring: a safe, low-effort app

A simple, low-scope Android app built as a safe, minimally challenging project.

• Honest reflection on project choices
• Awareness of idea vs execution
• Recognizes limits of current app

MVP — · 26 hours · 4 reviews

“Even though the Thomas described the app as a safer choice, the project still demonstrated solid execution, clear thinking, and an effective development workflow.”

Timmy Shen

Maximize every swipe with smarter card rewards

An app that lets users add credit cards, store reward structures, and compute optimal card usage and value for different spending categories.

• Rich credit card rewards database
• Customizable point valuations and multipliers
• Calculates optimal card for each category

MVP — · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“I think this app is extremely smart, especially for college students or anyone new to credit card use that are trying to boost credit while also getting the rewards it comes with.”

Tina Kamatovic

Turning roommate chores into a fair shared game

A shared household chore app with scheduling, leaderboards, punishment wheel, and chore swap features for roommates.

• Rich set of roommate-focused features
• Thoughtful chore swap and punishment mechanics
• Uses backend/server for shared households

MVP ✓ · 20 hours · 5 reviews

“A lot of productivity apps try to to do too much and add too many features that kind of brings down the actual viability of the app, but this app finds a good balance between communication, productivity, and solving actual issues that justifies downloading.”

Vincent Nguyen

Real-time dining hall ratings for Illini foodies

Android app for rating, reviewing, and browsing UIUC dining hall dishes with real-time Firestore data.

• Polished multi-screen UI with auth and guests
• Real-time Firestore integration and LiveData wiring
• Atomic rating updates and favorites functionality

MVP — · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“What worked really well was the real time Firestore integration, filtering, sorting, live ratings, and favorites all working together, it feels like a complete app and not a project.”

Weng Kiat Yong

Tracking macros and weight trends in one place

A calorie and macro tracking app with weight trend analysis and daily intake recommendations.

• Multiple health metrics tracked
• Weight trend over past week
• Summary insights like averages

MVP — · 22 hours · 5 reviews

“Features like protein tracking, macro breakdowns, water intake, and especially the weight trend analysis made it feel much more advanced than a basic tracker. The weight trend feature was probably the strongest part of the app for me because it focused on healthy progress instead”

Wenyu Wu

Wake up smarter with motion-aware sleep tracking

An Android smart alarm that uses accelerometer-based sleep detection to wake users gently during light sleep and track sleep history with insights.

• Polished multi-screen UX with history and insights
• Custom accelerometer-based sleep detection logic
• Thoughtful alarm behavior and gradual volume ramp

MVP — · 20 hours · 7 reviews

“The gradual alarm system and the motion detection, I think works well because it makes this genuinely intelligent rather than a regular run-of-the-mill alarm clock. I was surprised by the detailed sleep detection logic, which recognizes brief movement versus actually waking up.”

Winston Kim

One hub for discovering and tracking online petitions

An app that aggregates petitions from multiple platforms, lets users search, filter, bookmark, and follow trending petitions in one place.

• Robust scraping and data pipeline
• Thoughtful discovery UX (popular, related, bookmarks)
• Clear domain logic around petitions and trends

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“I really love all the features you have in the app, and your idea of creating somehting where people can sign petitions is brilliant, and I truly believe that this is something that might make a big social impact.”

Xinyi Yan

Study tasks meet adorable pets and rewards

A gamified to‑do list app with timers, calendar, and customizable pet avatars and themes.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Cute, customizable pet and theme system
• Integrated timers and gamified coin rewards

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 2 reviews

“I really liked the idea of the pet avatar, I think that increases engagement within the app.”

Yael Reyes Martinez

Mapping your commute’s pollution, one route at a time

An Android app that visualizes local and route-based air pollution levels with tips to reduce emissions.

• Route-based pollution tracking feature
• Integration with Google Maps API
• Actionable reduction tips for users

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“Its most unique feature is tracking the pollution along a specific route, which is really innovative and helpful for being aware of air quality conditions for a journey from one place to another.”

Yahui Bednar

Frame-perfect knowledge hub for 2XKO fighters

An all-in-one frame data, guides, and tools app for Riot’s 2XKO fighting game, aimed at both beginners and advanced players.

• Rich, domain-specific feature set
• Thoughtful tools for different player skill levels
• Extensive manually collected frame data

MVP ✓ · 4 challenges · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The most impressive thing here is the data collection: manually counting frames in-game for every move on every champion is a genuine grind, and that data being hard to find elsewhere gives the app real utility competitors can't easily replicate.”

Ye Fang

See your city’s construction from space and time

Android app that maps real public infrastructure projects, showing statuses, satellite imagery, and time-lapse progress with search and filters.

• Uses real map and satellite imagery APIs
• Rich feature set around city projects
• Thoughtful, civic-minded problem focus

MVP — · 19 hours · 8 reviews

“the time machine feature and the integration of satellite imagery is very impressive offering users a unique way to witness their community.”

Yi Zhong

Turn nearby free time into instant real-life hangouts

Flare is a real-time, location-based Android app that lets users broadcast activities and instantly match with nearby people to hang out, with time-limited chat and ratings.

• Production-level polish and end-to-end integration
• Complex real-time matching and geo features
• Clear, compelling problem framing and demo

MVP — · 20 hours · 3 reviews

“Flare is an sophisticated project that stands out for its transition from a coding assignment to a legitimate, full-stack product. The inclusion of thoughtful features like 48-hour self-destructing chats and dual-language support shows a high degree of product intentionality.”

Yinan Feng

Hand-crafted mood tracking with charts you control

An offline mood-tracking journal app with custom-drawn charts, secure PIN lock, reminders, and rich stats.

• Hand-built Canvas-based chart system
• Robust features and data safety (trash, PIN, reboot-safe reminders)
• Clear, thoughtful explanation of design choices

MVP ✓ · 3 challenges · 17 hours · 6 reviews

“The custom Canvas-based chart system was especially impressive and showed a strong understanding of Android development and coordinate-based UI design.”

Yinuo Li

Turning your campus map into a social network

Cartograph is a campus-focused social map where students drop time-limited pins and events to share moments and discover each other in real time.

• Cohesive, polished UX centered on the map
• Rich real-time features using Firebase backend
• Thoughtful social mechanics and scarcity design

MVP — · 21 hours · 6 reviews

“Overall, the project felt creative, scalable, and genuinely like something that could evolve into a real campus product.”

Young Nian

Turning messy soccer card math into instant answers

An app that calculates cross-market soccer card arbitrage profits and grading decisions using fees, exchange rates, and risk logic.

• Well-defined niche problem solved end-to-end
• Bid limit and profit logic with direction toggle
• Grading risk calculator with clear verdict

MVP — · 21 hours · 4 reviews

“The app is definitely for a niche audience, but I can see other people with this interest finding a lot of usage! I like how simple and straightforward the interface is.”

Yug Kolla

Never forget the perfect gift for anyone again

Gift Mind is a customizable gift-recommender and reminder app with profiles, saved ideas, and calendar integration.

• Highly polished multi-screen UX and theming
• Rich profile and gift-tracking data model
• Export/import and calendar integration features

MVP ✓ · 23 hours · 2 reviews

“Overall, a very out-of-the-box and creative app! I would have loved to have this when gift shopping for my internship mentors.”

Zachary Olmsted

Crowdsourced campus study spot busyness, done right

Campus study-space app showing real-time busyness, ratings, and study sessions using an online Firestore backend.

• Polished, feature-rich multi-screen UX
• Realtime crowd data with Firestore backend
• Thoughtful anti-spam and rating logic

MVP — · 21 hours · 1 review

“I love how original this concept is, taking the premise behind apps that already exist and expanding it to an area that would benefit from this same system of organization.”

Zane Ritchie

All your clubs, roles, and events in one hub

An app for managing clubs, roles, events, subgroups, forums, RSVPs, and executive moderation in one place.

• Rich club role and hierarchy system
• Subgroups and event RSVP tracking
• Creative vote-to-kick executive feature

MVP — · 20 hours · 4 reviews

“I think its a good idea, and it would be a good alternative to messy discord servers and notifications all popping up at once.”

Zehra Ozcan

Share, discover, and hear your next piano piece

Android app for sharing, searching, and organizing piano sheet music with optional audio uploads.

• Well-structured multi-page UI
• Thoughtful library and recommendation design
• Optional audio upload for scores

MVP — · 21 hours · 5 reviews

“My favorite things about this app include the main premise and the sorting of the home page. I found the ability to attach a recording of the piece delightfully surprising and really useful.”

Zheyu Wang

Turning your budget into tailored investment plans

Personal finance app that recommends investment plans based on user savings, income, expenses, and goals.

• Thoughtful financial domain logic
• Use of polymorphism and custom algorithms
• History and profile storage with JSON

MVP ✓ · 2 challenges · 19 hours · 8 reviews

“The customized investment recommendations based on your budget worked really well and i was surprised to see it factor in risk and liquidity instead of just the highest interest rate.”

Zhuoran Huang

AI summaries meet mindful, customizable news reading

An AI-powered news reader that summarizes articles, tracks reading habits, and offers customizable notifications and accessibility options.

• Rich, multi-screen feature set
• Thoughtful notifications and analytics
• Strong accessibility customization

MVP — · 22 hours · 4 reviews

“Genuine accessibility work. Font size with four steps (S/M/L/XL), a dedicated high-contrast mode separate from dark mode, and text-to-speech with both speed and pitch controls.”

Zikang Liu

Excited first steps into app development

Insufficient information provided to determine what the app does.

• Expresses enthusiasm for learning
• App reportedly built with AI assistance

MVP ✓ · 22 hours · 3 reviews

“This app offers a lot of convenience for a wide variety of people. Its design is approachable and user-friendly.”

How These Awards Are Chosen

Picking awards from hundreds of student projects is hard. Reading every reflection and watching every video is impractical, and ranking projects by review counts alone unfairly penalizes students whose reviewers happened to be quieter. So we built a deliberate, multi-step evaluation process that combines what reviewers said, what the project did, and how much effort went in.

1. Score every peer review

Each of the semester’s peer reviews is rated by an AI model on three axes — enthusiasm (how positive and confident the review is), specificity (how concrete it is about what the project does), and award-worthiness (whether the reviewer would actually nominate this project).

Reviews from staff mentors carry double weight, peer reviews single. We then apply Bayesian shrinkage to the per-project averages so a single rave review from a small reviewer pool can’t outweigh a broader signal — the smaller the pool, the more the project regresses toward the cohort mean.

2. Score every project

Independently of the reviews, each project gets a second look from the AI based on the student’s reflection, video transcript, and self-suggested award category. The model rates the project on craftsmanship, ambition, and clarity, and writes the short summary, signature phrase, and project strengths shown above.

3. Combine, with effort and challenges in the mix

The two scoring passes are blended into a single quality score, with the reviewer signal contributing roughly two-thirds and the project judgment one-third. We then factor in the student’s logged hours over the semester and a small bonus for completing additional project challenges. Projects whose MVP didn’t come together get a soft penalty rather than an outright disqualification, so a well-presented MVP-incomplete project can still place if reviewers loved it.

4. Pick the winners and craft category titles

We pick the top 12 projects by combined score, then polish each winner’s self-suggested award into a presentable category title — Best App For Inhalers Users becomes Best Health Tracking App, for example, keeping the spirit of the student’s suggestion while broadening it enough to host nominees too. A second pass over the full list refines anything that’s too close to a sibling category, so the audience never sees two slides that feel like the same award.

5. Pick nominees per category

Each remaining project is then scored against every category at once, with clearly out-of-place categories elided. Each project lands in its highest-fit category that still has room. Projects whose first-choice category is already full naturally spill over to their second-best fit, and no category exceeds its nominee cap.