JejakNusa

Explore Culture, Embrace Identity

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Inspiration

Our inspiration for JejakNusa comes from the urgent challenge of preserving Indonesia’s cultural richness in a digital era where younger generations are mostly connected online. We saw three major issues: limited public access to cultural content, fragmented and uneven digitalization efforts across regions, and low community participation. These challenges made us realize the need for an engaging, social, and scalable platform that brings culture closer to everyone.

What it does

JejakNusa is a cultural social platform that combines short-form content, an interactive map, and immersive experiences to make culture accessible and engaging.

  • Users watch cultural videos from across Indonesia
  • Explore posts through a map with instant translation
  • Experience 3D virtual tours of heritage sites
  • Join quizzes, daily challenges, and Word of the Day
  • Support or showcase local cultural MSMEs
  • And collect badges and achievements through their journey It turns culture into an interactive digital experience, blending learning, play, and community.

How we built it

We built JejakNusa with an agile MVP approach, focusing on essential features that directly solve the problems of access, digitization, and engagement.

  • Frontend: React Native with Tailwind CSS for a fast and responsive cross-platform mobile app.
  • Backend: Hono (TypeScript), Drizzle ORM, and PostgreSQL for performance and scalability.
  • AI Integration: Gemini API for automatic translation of cultural content. In the hackathon, we rapidly iterated on design and core features to deliver a working prototype in a very limited time.

Challenges we ran into

  1. Time pressure: Delivering a multi-feature prototype within a short period.
  2. Feature prioritization: Deciding which features (social feed, map, translate, gamification) to implement first without losing impact.
  3. Impact validation: Ensuring every feature truly addresses access, engagement, and inclusivity, not just technical novelty.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

  • Successfully delivering a functional prototype that combines cultural content, interactive maps, 3D tours, translation, gamification, and MSME support in a single app.
  • Building an experience that feels engaging and social, not just an archive.
  • Designing a platform that can scale beyond the hackathon, addressing a real need for preserving and sharing culture.

What we learned

We learned the importance of impact-driven design — always asking: does this feature help people connect with culture? We also learned how valuable agile methods and MVP thinking are for hackathons, and how user-centric design helps prioritize features that matter most.

What’s next for JejakNusa

  • Expand content by collaborating with local communities and institutions.
  • Enhance gamification with leaderboards, rewards, and community challenges.
  • Explore AR features for a more immersive cultural experience.
  • Enable user-generated 3D tours and a more complete marketplace for cultural MSMEs.

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