PRODUCT ENGINEERING CASE STUDY

Digitizing the
Informal Campus Economy

UNfresh is not just a map. It is a multi-role marketplace engine connecting 2,000+ students with 40+ campus vendors in real-time, designed to bridge high-density demand with fragmented, hyper-local supply.

The Challenge

The "Last-Meter" Visibility Gap

University campuses operate as micro-cities with thousands of daily transactions. Yet, the ecosystem of vendors, vending machines, and services is analogue and invisible. This creates significant market friction: demand cannot find supply efficiently, leading to lost revenue and poor user experience.

The 3-Sided Marketplace Ecosystem

A complex system requiring three distinct interfaces to operate synchronously in real-time.

Role: The Explorer (User)

Real-Time Discovery

Optimized for speed. Users find food or services within seconds using geospatial indexing (PostGIS).

UNfresh User Map Interface
Interface: Geospatial PWA
Role: The Vendor

Digital Storefront Mgmt.

Empowering micro-businesses. Vendors manage visibility, hours, and catalogs from a mobile dashboard.

UNfresh Vendor Portal
Interface: Vendor CMS
Role: The Super Admin

Ecosystem Governance

The "God View". Monitoring platform health, approving vendors, and analyzing transaction volume.

UNfresh Admin Dashboard
Interface: Analytics Dashboard
System Architecture

Engineered for High Concurrency

The system handles thousands of simultaneous connections with near-zero latency using an event-driven architecture.

React Frontend

Optimistic UI updates and efficient state management provide a native-app feel.

Real-time DB

Postgres changes are pushed instantly via Websockets (WAL) to all connected clients.

Geospatial Engine

PostGIS spatial queries allow efficient filtering of points by radius (O(log n)).

Vercel Edge

Global content delivery network ensures low latency asset loading worldwide.