I Went to a Dump for an AWS Hackathon. Then I Gave Cardboard a Character Arc.
Building Phir, a recycling prototype connecting households, kabadiwalas, and recyclers with AWS integration paths, Indian truck-art-inspired design, cinematic storytelling, and a victory dance that nobody technically needed.
Live Demo | https://main.d3hgpobebqphe1.amplifyapp.com/ |
|---|---|
Youtube Video | https://youtu.be/eGYJ1iswPyc |
Chapter-1 The Story
where it all began :
Most hackathon stories begin with an idea scribbled on a whiteboard.
Mine involved standing at a dump.
Excellent production design. Questionable fragrance department.
For our AWS environmental hackathon, we built Phir, a recycling prototype connecting households, kabadiwalas, and recyclers. My contribution focused on the frontend, design, video, and the creative decisions that eventually gave a cardboard box more character development than some movie protagonists.
We wanted to help recyclable household materials find their way into the existing recovery network.
I also wanted the website to look incredible.
These two priorities occasionally met at three in the morning over a font that nobody else had noticed.
The cardboard has somewhere to go. The connections need work.
A household has recyclable material. A kabadiwala can collect and aggregate it. A recycler needs that material.
The people exist. The material exists. The challenge is coordinating the journey between them.
Phir gives that journey a shared structure:
Household → Kabadiwala → Recycler
Our starting point was the recovery network already doing this work. Kabadiwalas bring practical knowledge of materials, collection, and local demand. Phir aims to make those connections easier to see and coordinate.
An app announcing that it has “discovered recycling” would be an awkward thing to present to someone who has been collecting scrap for twenty years.
Chapter-2 The Design Language
a little “Horn OK Please,” a lot of interface decisions :
Phir’s visual identity draws from Indian truck art: bold colours, expressive lettering, decorative borders, and the wonderfully confident belief that there is always room for one more flourish.
Those trucks have been doing visual communication for decades. Some have stronger brand recognition than startups with entire marketing departments.
The influence felt appropriate for a project built around collection and movement. I wanted the interface to carry some of the character of the world our collection partners work in.
Warm cream and paper tones sit alongside strong reds, blues, and greens. Paper and cardboard textures connect the visual treatment to the materials moving through Phir. Illustrated characters give each role a recognisable presence.
The cinematic selection menu introduces those roles with slightly more drama than a recycling dashboard strictly requires.
The challenge was translating an expressive visual style into something usable. Decorative borders frame content. Typography establishes hierarchy. Repeated colours, shapes, and textures connect the landing page, dashboards, story, and video.
The controls still need to be obvious. Numbers need to be readable. Status changes need to stand out.
“Where is the collection button?” should never become the platform’s first sorting challenge.
There is an obvious contradiction in making a colourful website about garbage. I went to a dump and came back worrying about typography. The garbage had bigger problems.
But the colour had a purpose. Phir follows materials towards another use, and I wanted the design to express that possibility. Indian truck art gave it a visual language rooted in collection and movement—bold, familiar, and full of character. A battered cardboard box might be at the end of one journey. It can still make an entrance into the next.
Chapter-3 The Landing Page
Three roles, three different reasons to open the website
Designing the frontend meant understanding what each participant needed to accomplish.
Households need to list materials, enter quantities, request collection, and follow progress.
Kabadiwalas need visibility into local opportunities, material quantities, requests, and collected inventory. Our locality-based approach shows approximate opportunities without exposing exact household addresses.
Recyclers need to express demand, view supply, create bookings, and confirm transfers.
The workflow states matter too:
Available → Requested → Collected → Reserved → Transferred
A pretty button still needs a correct answer to “what happens when I press this?”A deeply inconvenient requirement for anyone currently enjoying the pretty-button stage.
Chapter-4 Where AWS fits into Phir
The backend includes an AWS-backed integration path for persistence and image-assisted material identification. The integration code and the local demonstration are separate from verified live cloud deployment, which remains a next step.
Three services have clear roles in that path.
Amazon S3 handles temporary material-photo uploads. The upload helper creates a presigned URL valid for ten minutes and includes deletion support. Photos support the identification step; the application’s material records track the ongoing journey. S3 documentation
Amazon Rekognition Custom Labels provides the material-recognition integration. The backend calls
DetectCustomLabels , processes labels and confidence scores, and flags uncertain results for confirmation. Rekognition documentation Amazon DynamoDB has an optional persistence repository for recovery records, including materials, collection requests, inventory, requirements, and bookings. DynamoDB documentation
The intended image-assisted flow is:
Upload photo → suggest a material → confirm or correct → create the material record.
The confirmation step is important. Recognition helps identify a category; it does not magically establish weight. Quantity remains user-supplied, and manual material entry stays available.
A person trying to recycle a bottle should be able to proceed when image classification is unavailable.
The broader architecture plan considers Amplify Hosting, API Gateway, Lambda, Amazon Location Service, and CloudWatch for hosting, backend execution, geographic features, and monitoring. Those are planned deployment components rather than claims of a completed cloud rollout.
Chapter-5 The Video
Then I tried to explain everything in 3 minutes :
The video begins with my actual dump-site footage, then introduces the material journey and Phir’s three roles.
I worked on pacing, transitions, typography, graphics, highlighted subtitles, and narration alignment. The visual language needed to match the website so the explanation felt like part of the same project.
Naturally, I also became emotionally invested in a pie chart.
It looked too basic.
The pie chart had done nothing wrong. It simply encountered me during a design revision.
Video work made the communication problem very clear: a viewer needs to understand the next connection before the scene moves on. Good timing means showing the right thing when the narration needs it.
Apparently, “make it cinematic” is not a recognised unit of time.
A small recycling project, and an unexpectedly personal metaphor
Working on Phir kept bringing me back to one thought: usefulness depends on context.
A cardboard box on the floor is clutter. That same cardboard, sorted and connected to someone who needs it, becomes material.
Chapter-6 The Learning
There is a life metaphor hiding there.
An unfinished project can become the starting point for a better one. An idea that didn’t fit one brief can find a place in another. A difficult first attempt can teach you something the polished version will quietly depend on.
Phir itself went through revisions, rejected directions, and interfaces that looked considerably better in my imagination.
Some of that work found a second use. Some taught me what to change.
Progress occasionally looks like sorting through your own pile of attempts and finding the useful pieces.
That is what I like about the name Phir: again.
Another attempt. Another use. Another beginning.
Preferably after some sleep.
Phir milenge.
One small thing before you go.
Near the end of Phir’s story, there is a game: six materials, six dispatches, a timer, and a First-mile Champion stamp waiting to be earned.
Complete it and you’ll discover the victory dance.
Yes. There is dancing.
After all the material lifecycles, API boundaries, design revisions, and cloud architecture, I made the website celebrate your sorting skills with choreography.
Life does not always give you a clear signal when you’ve done something right.
My recycling website does.
It dances.
Thank you for reading,
Have a nice day.....
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