UI UX
A verification system that lets students judge hostel trustworthiness before they arrive — without shutting unverified listings out of the marketplace.
Duration
2-week hackathon build
Organization
WLiT
Created on
Updated on
Challenge
Challenge: Students relocating for exam prep — already under significant pressure, often away from family for the first time — have no reliable way to verify a hostel before arriving. The gap between what's promised and what's actually there only becomes visible after move-in, and this is a pattern people have quietly come to accept rather than a rare failure.
Solution
I designed a verification system requiring hostels to submit at least 10 real photos, legitimate government documents, and a written explanation for why they should be verified — a deliberately layered bar, since photos alone are easy to fake, documents raise the cost of lying, and the written step filters out anyone not serious enough to follow through. Verified hostels aren't walled off from unverified ones; they simply get more exposure, so trust is rewarded without excluding anyone from the marketplace. Hostels can pay to fast-track the process, but only if they still meet the same underlying criteria — payment buys speed, not a shortcut.
On the core trade-off between friction and participation: I leaned toward trust over convenience. Even though this started as a hackathon project, the whole premise only works if the verified badge actually means something — a lighter bar would have made the system faster to fill up, but faster and meaningless isn't worth building.
Impact
A working demo with the verification badge and criteria fully designed; the inspection workflow is specified but not yet tested against real submissions or real hostels.