CampusCents

App Store Mockup: A realistic App Store feature showcase.
Frictionless Setup: Clear, seamless, and welcoming onboarding.
All-In-One Dashboard: Plan, log and anlayze expenses seamlessly.
Adaptive Dark Mode UI: Accessible native dark mode.

Inspiration

As college students, we know firsthand the difficulties of managing daily expenses while balancing workload. Standard budgeting apps are built for full-time workers, not students managing tuition, meal plans, scholarships, and off-campus rent. We set out to create an app that declutters the confusing financial jargon and focuses on accessibility and efficiency. By consolidating the scattered range of student expenses into a cohesive dashboard, our goal was to build an app that promotes financial literacy and helps users make smarter decisions. Furthermore, while AI is revolutionizing personal finance, it often comes at the cost of data privacy, and we believe financial data is too sensitive to risk. You shouldn't have to choose between smart, automated budgeting and keeping your personal information secure. That’s why our app is built natively for iOS, using Apple's Foundation Models to deliver intelligent financial insights while ensuring your data stays secure.

What it does

CampusCents is a comprehensive, privacy-first intelligent financial dashboard built natively for iOS and designed for the college student experience. Key features include:
Budget Breakdown: Tracks categories specifically tailored to student life (e.g., tuition, rent, meal plan, groceries, and transportation).
Affordability Checker: Students can enter a specific expense to see exactly how it will affect their remaining budget for the week/month.
Smart Insights: Uses on-device AI to provide personalized budget reviews, warnings, and perspectives on spending habits.
Unified Dashboard & Logging: A quick, intuitive UI to log transactions, review common purchases, and check budget health scores.

How we built it

We built CampusCents natively for iOS to ensure efficient performance and an intuitive user experience.

Frontend: We built the app in SwiftUI to deliver a clean, organized, and highly responsive interface that is instantly familiar to Apple users
Data Management: We utilized Combine and the @Published property wrapper in our AppState to manage global data seamlessly. For data persistence, we utilized UserDefaults for local, offline-first storage.
AI Integration: Instead of relying on an expensive cloud LLM API that compromises user privacy, we implemented Apple Foundation Models to run the AI insights entirely on-device (with an additional rule-based fallback system if on-device AI is unavailable).

Challenges we ran into

Implementing intelligent features while strictly adhering to our privacy-first mission meant finding a way to run AI models entirely on-device
Troubleshooting repository configuration and a git push credential mistake on our initial repository setup phase
Managing extensive merge conflicts as our team simultaneously developed deeply interconnected UI components and backend logic
Understanding the intricacies of native iOS development and growing our working knowledge in Swift to deliver a refined user experience.
Implementing advanced UI designs by utilizing SwiftUI's native "Materials" to achieve a signature, dynamic “Liquid Glass” glassmorphism look across our app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are incredibly proud of what we built, specifically in three core areas:

Privacy by Design: We successfully proved that students don't have to trade their personal data for intelligent financial tracking.
Accessible, User-Oriented UI: We designed an inclusive, highly accessible onboarding flow that simplifies confusing financial jargon.
Financial Efficiency: By decluttering the user experience and implementing a wide range of insights, our dashboard allows users to feel in control of their budget, turning a complicated and tedious task into an efficient daily habit.

What we learned

We learned a lot about user instincts and psychology in UX design, specifically how small visual details, like the structure of text inputs, can completely change how trustworthy a financial app feels.
We discovered that basic quality-of-life improvements have a massive impact in reduction of user friction and limiting daily budgeting overwhelm.
We significantly deepened our understanding of native Swift iOS development and the powerful capabilities of utilizing on-device machine learning for privacy-first applications.

What's next for CampusCents

University Integrations: Exploring ways to securely sync directly with student portals to automatically pull in tuition, housing, material, and meal costs.
Monthly Vs. Semesterly Budgeting Options: Implementing the ability to differentiate between semesterly budgeting and monthly budgeting styles to add better personalization for different student financial cycles.
Predictive Forecasting: Expanding our AI Insights to help students forecast specific campus scenarios (e.g., "At your current rate, your meal plan dollars will run out by mid-November").
Three-Level AI Structure: Scaling our AI intelligence infrastructure to support a three-level approach for growth:
- Private Cloud Compute & LLMs: Allowing users the ability to securely access larger, external LLMs, like ChatGPT, for deeper financial analysis, routed through Apple's Private Cloud Compute to guarantee data protection.
- On-Device Apple Foundation Model (Optimized for iPhone Pro) for instant and local financial categorizations.
- Algorithmic Fallbacks: Efficient default calculations for standard budgeting when heavy AI isn't available or necessary.