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Four Pillar Hackathon Judging Framework
A systematic approach to evaluating hackathon submissions across four key dimensions: potential impact, idea quality, technical implementation, and design/user experience.
How It Works
Each submission is scored on how big a problem it solves (impact), how unique the solution is (idea quality), how well engineered it is (technical), and how usable it is (design). This creates comprehensive evaluation avoiding single-dimension bias.
Components
Assess potential impact - how big is the problem being solved
Evaluate idea quality - uniqueness and innovation of the solution
Review technical implementation - engineering quality and integrations
Judge design and user experience - usability and visual appeal
When to Use
When evaluating large numbers of diverse technical projects where you need consistent, fair comparison across different domains and skill levels.
When Not to Use
For specialized competitions focused on single domains, or when evaluating based solely on business metrics like revenue or user growth.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“In the hackathon, judges used this framework to fairly compare a simple but impactful parenting app against a complex API management system, evaluating each on all four pillars rather than just technical complexity.”