EXPerience
A HackLondon 2024 concept connecting productivity, habits, and a more game-like sense of progress.
EXPerience was an early experiment in making productivity feel like an unfolding journey rather than another administrative chore.
The situation.
HackLondon 2024 created a 24-hour build context that extended into roughly 36 hours for the team. The prompt became a question that reappears across later work: can habits and tasks feel rewarding without being reduced to a sterile checklist?
The response was EXPerience, a web platform for task and habit management that treated productivity as an immersive journey rather than a plain checklist.
What I did.
I served as the team’s full-stack developer, using the MERN stack to build the experience. My public reflection credits Haroon Yasin on backend and authorisation, John Paul San Diego on frontend and design, and Jia Cheng Lim and Aman Hayer on ideation, pitch, and data work.
I helped lead the four-person build, implemented frontend and backend work, and checked the API endpoints while the team divided responsibility across engineering, design, data, and the pitch.
How the work unfolded.
Translated a broad theme into a usable loop
Made task and habit management the foundation, then explored how progression and presentation could give daily effort more emotional texture.
Built across the stack
Contributed frontend and backend work in MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js while the team shaped the experience and pitch together.
Presented and collected feedback
Presented the prototype at HackLondon and received constructive feedback after the awards, which the team treated as part of the learning rather than as a finished verdict.
What happened.
The team completed and presented the prototype at HackLondon 2024. It did not win, but the presentation drew positive audience engagement and useful feedback from an event organiser.
Its lasting value was making the idea of game-like, more human productivity concrete enough for me to revisit in later products.
What I learned.
A theme needs a functional core
The immersive layer only works when the underlying task and habit flows are coherent.
Feedback after the pitch is part of the build
A hackathon’s value was not just the demo; direct questions and critique exposed what the story of the product still needed.
Time pressure clarifies collaboration
The 36-hour stretch made clearly divided roles across engineering, design, data, and pitch essential.
Related links.
Repositories, demos, event pages, posts, and other places connected to this project.
- EXPerience repositoryProject code for the HackLondon 2024 prototype.
- Waseef’s HackLondon 2024 project reflectionTeam roles, build duration, technology stack, and feedback.
- Waseef’s HackLondon presentation follow-upPresenting EXPerience at HackLondon 2024.
- Waseef’s CVLists the project and the stated full-stack responsibilities.