Morgan Erdman

EnerGenius

Hackathon Project

Year

2026

Duration

24 Hours

Overview

Living with multiple roommates in Arizona, the summer electricity bill was always a source of stress. No visibility into when appliances were costing the most. No easy way to fix it.

EnerGenius is a smart home energy optimization dashboard that tells you exactly when to run your appliances to save money and reduce your carbon footprint, all based on when you are and are not at home.

Living with multiple roommates in Arizona, the summer electricity bill was always a source of stress. No visibility into when appliances were costing the most. No easy way to fix it.

My Role

Product Designer: I identified electricity and energy usage as our problem space, shaped how the product would work, and owned the full visual direction from color and type to every screen the user touches.

Front End Developer: I built the interface in code using Cursor and AI-assisted development to move at hackathon speed.

Discovery

Brainstorming at speed

Finding the right problem

Our hackathon track challenged us to build something that could leave a positive environmental impact.

All of us had experienced being a college student in Arizona, and experienced the pain of figuring out when to use the AC at the right times.

I suggested we try to stick to the energy and electricity problem space because many people face this issue in Arizona.

A real frustration into a product

We discovered that recommending optimal times to run electric appliances and HVAC systems could benefit both users and the environment by reducing electricity consumption and emissions.

To make this possible, we only needed a few inputs from users: their daily at-home hours and a handful of preference details.

We discovered that recommending optimal times to run electric appliances and HVAC systems could benefit both users and the environment by reducing electricity consumption and emissions.

To make this possible, we only needed a few inputs from users: their daily at-home hours and a handful of preference details.

Figuring out our roles

I had never met any of my teammates before this event, so it was key that we all knew our roles before jumping into creating our product.

I was in charge of the design system, and the front end development, and two of my teammates were in charge of the backend, API connections, and debugging.

Our last teammate was in charge of the optimization engine, which was written in Python and then connected through FastAPI.

I had never met any of my teammates before this event, so it was key that we all knew our roles before jumping into creating our product.

Design

Playing at my strengths

Rapidly creating a design system

With our plan and roles locked in, I had around two hours to build the full design system before pivoting into code. Despite this, I was not going to trade speed for quality.

I first created a markdown file of everything we wanted in our project design with Claude, and then used the Figma MCP through Claude Code to build out a system far faster than I could have manually.

Doing this saved us countless hours of ensuring the design of our project would be consistent.

Creating the main dashboard

After I knew the direction of the design of the app, I could begin building the interface of the main dashboard, which was the main objective of our project first.

My teammates gave me feedback as I moved through each page and screen to ensure it was something we all liked and agreed upon.

Delivery

Presenting our final project

Final design

If you'd like to check out the GitHub repo of our project you can check it out here, and our Devpost here!

Reflection

My Key Learnings

What did I learn?

Choose the right tools when under pressure.

Choose your tools before you need them. We started in an AI website builder that couldn't handle the backend logic and API connections we needed, then lost time migrating to Cursor mid-hackathon. Starting in the right environment would have made the whole build smoother.

Own your role completely.

I came into this hackathon not knowing anybody at all, but I knew exactly what I could contribute and where my limits were. Leaning into my strengths helped my teammates do what they did best. Everyone agreed that visually, EnerGenius felt like a real product. That came from committing fully to the craft even under pressure.

Thanks for Reading!

Check more of my projects, or reach out if you want to learn more about them!