The START Hack in St. Gallen proudly calls itself Europe’s most entrepreneurial hackathon—and it was the perfect stage for my very first hackathon experience! Alongside three great colleagues, I dove headfirst into 36 hours of coding, fueled by lots of free food and drinks. We decided to tackle the challenge of the city of St. Gallen, which outlined the following problems:
- Buying bulky goods disposal stickers is a hassle. Citizens often struggle to figure out how many stickers they need and where to purchase them.
- This confusion leads to an administrative burden for the city and improper disposal of bulky goods.
For our (winning 🎉) submission, we built two Flutter apps to combat these problems.
App #1: For Citizens#
The first app is built to guide citizens through the process of correctly calculating the number of bulky goods disposal stickers required. Through a series of straightforward questions, the app determines how many stickers you’ll need based on the item. For instance, when disposing of a sofa, the number of seats determines the required sticker count. Once all items are added, users can purchase e-stamps—short numeric codes that act as digital stickers—directly within the app. These e-stamps can either be printed or written directly onto the bulky item with a marker.
App #2: For Collectors#
To close the loop, we also created a companion app for collectors, allowing them to verify the validity of e-stamps. It features a simple OCR module that can recognize numeric codes and verify the numeric e-stamps. Once scanned, the app displays the encoded information.