Global water technology company, Xylem, has awarded a team of hackathon participants who developed an innovative app to promote sustainable water consumption. Team WatApp won HackZurich 2022’s Xylem Water Challenge with their social gaming app that helps people make smart water choices in their everyday lives, build long-term water-saving habits, and share their results with friends.

Having sponsored the event for the last two years, Xylem continues to challenge teams to solve global water issues with a unique, digital approach. This year, Xylem asked hackathon participants to develop a multi-faceted solution to change the public’s water habits and increase awareness of water threats through a revolutionary social gaming app that would improve water sustainability. WatApp achieved this over a non-stop 40-hour hackathon event in Zurich, Switzerland.

With water scarcity affecting billions of people globally each year, the WatApp team created an app that would improve water consumption habits by suggesting more sustainable choices using educational gaming features. The recommendations are generated from answers to personalized weekly challenges, taking data on current habits and location into consideration. The app also presents water savings within a local context, for example, if you live in Switzerland the app will compare the amount of water you save to the daily average water consumption of a Swiss person.