Monash University students triumph at leading competition UNIHACK 2025
Australia’s largest and premier student hackathon, UNIHACK, tasks university and TAFE students with building innovative and market-ready projects within 48 hours. This year, Monash’s Growth Garden team triumphed out of 135+ projects from 750 participants and 20 universities represented.
(Top row from left) Nathan Culshaw, Luca Lowndes and Joshua Riantoputra. (Bottom row from left) Chloe Koe, Angus Bosman and Keren Collins.
The wealth of information on social media should create opportunities, but it often leads to distraction instead. Overwhelmed, people develop unhealthy habits, such as spending more time indoors.
Growth Garden is an application that helps users prioritise self-care through a personalised journey powered by AI.
It was built by Joshua Riantoputra (Bachelor of Science Advanced - Research (Honours)), Angus Bosman (Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts), Chloe Koe (Bachelor of Computer Science), Keren Collins (Bachelor of Engineering (Honours)), Luca Lowndes (Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and Bachelor of Computer Science)) and Nathan Culshaw (Bachelor of Computer Science Advanced (Honours)).
Users first identify goals before their virtual assistant Bruce sets up a routine with regular prompts. And as the name implies, when tasks are completed the user receives small plants, mushrooms and other items to decorate their garden – a reflection of their own growth.
What makes Growth Garden stand out is its breadth. While many applications help build habits, they often focus on specific domains like fitness or studying. Others try to minimise bad habits by creating barriers, but do not provide positive alternatives.
‘A major highlight for us was making the experience in the app very calming thanks to a great combination of assets, colour schemes, shaders and sounds. It was all about relaxing the users and gently guiding them to their goals,’ said Angus.
‘Having the items snap to the surface of the planet was also a major win, because it just feels nicer when growing your garden.’
Considering all aspects, the winners also avoided using single looping audio track for the background music, which can become repetitive and disengaging. Instead, they used a variety of ambient tracks, complemented with custom sounds designed by the team, for a more dynamic experience.
‘We’re keen to further tailor and train our large language model to ensure the tasks we provide are even more suited to developing good habits for Growth Garden users. One possibility would be to enhance our AI with more psychological research, meaning that the tasks it provides have a stronger grounding in scientifically-proven methods,’ said Josh.
‘And more mushrooms! If we had a year’s worth of extra time, we could spend all of it developing more mushroom assets, tweaking the look and feel of each species and even adding animation! That satisfying, warm feel really helps transform daunting tasks into something cozy.’
Inspired by the student hackathons in the United States and Europe, UNIHACK was established in 2014 by the prestigious student team, WIRED Monash.
It’s now the nation’s go-to hackathon for university and TAFE students, and is open to people of all skill levels and backgrounds.
Weave and Shuffl, two student teams also from Monash University, came second and third place respectively in the 2025 competition.
The former is an AI-powered solution for outfit planning, enhancing accessibility and convenience through virtual try-ons while reducing decision fatigue.
The latter is a revolutionary smart card games table that seamlessly unites in-person and online players powered by real-time AI coaching, speech recognition and NFC-based card scanning.