Judging Criteria

Grand Prize · Runner Up · Defense · Energy and Industrialization · Health and Public Service · Open Category

1. Problem & Real-World Impact

   25pts

   The problem that was solved and the solution proposed. Does the project address an important, clearly defined problem? Is that problem relevant to the team's selected category and the mission of the hackathon? Could the idea meaningfully impact the world in a positive way, specifically within the theme of the selected track?

2. Technical Execution

   50pts

   The execution of the proposed idea — technical depth, originality, and final project polish. How technically strong is the implementation? Does it demonstrate meaningful engineering depth? Does the prototype work? Were difficult technical challenges actually solved? Is the approach novel or meaningfully better than existing solutions? Did the team find a creative way to solve the problem rather than simply reproducing an existing product?

3. Feasibility & Deployment Potential

   25pts

   The team's ability to carry their project beyond the hackathon and into the real world. Could this realistically be developed and deployed beyond the hackathon? Could the project turn into a real company? Has the team considered cost, security, infrastructure, regulation, integration, and user adoption?

Best Use of AI

1. Novelty and Importance of AI to the Solution

   25pts

   The novelty and importance of the use of AI as part of the solution each team builds. Is AI fundamental to the product, or could it easily be removed?

2. Technical Sophistication

   50pts

   The technical execution and depth of AI tooling within the team's project. Did the team do something technically interesting beyond connecting an existing model to an interface? Did the team demonstrate thoughtful model selection, orchestration, evaluation, fine-tuning, agent design, data work, inference optimization, or other substantive AI engineering? A simple wrapper around an existing model should generally score lower unless the team has created meaningful innovation elsewhere in the AI system.

3. Reliability, Evaluation & Trustworthiness

   25pts

   The team's commitment to — and the reality of — the solution's reliability and trustworthiness, toward deploying the project in the real world. Does the AI implementation reliably work to solve the proposed problem? Has the team considered failure modes, hallucinations, security, or reliability where relevant? Have they developed an appropriately extensive and well thought out testing regimen?

Best in Design

1. Design Quality & Craft

   30pts

   The beauty of the resulting project and originality in the design. How beautiful and polished is the project? Did the team consider accessibility (readability, color choice, etc.)? Is the design novel and unique, or copied from well known designs?

2. User Experience & Usability

   40pts

   The experience of using the presented product, its intuitiveness, and most importantly the criticality of the design to solving the problem (form follows function). Is the product intuitive? Does the design make a complicated task simpler? Does the design help the technology accomplish its purpose? Is information presented clearly? Is the design of the project critical to its success at solving the proposed problem?

3. Understanding of the User

   30pts

   The team's commitment to defining a specific and deep representation of the user, and guiding their design and solution according to that persona. Does the team have a guiding-star target persona? Is that persona detailed and well defined? Are there examples of decisions or components of the design that derive from the defined persona? Does the design take into account who will use the project in the real world?