Super happy to share my entry for the Figma Makeathon 😊 Connected Earth. Language separates us. Sound connects us. https://www.connected.earth Connected Earth started with a simple observation: despite being more connected than ever, many of us feel increasingly disconnected from each other, our surroundings, and the places we live. Most platforms ask us to compete for attention. More followers. More likes. More visibility. More noise. I wanted to explore the opposite. Connected Earth is a living archive of sounds contributed by people around the world. A quiet place where someone can capture a moment from their corner of the planet and share it with someone they’ve never met. The sound of rain in Scotland. A train arriving in Tokyo. Waves breaking in Australia. Bikes whizzing past in park in Amsterdam. Children playing on a street somewhere you’ll probably never visit. None of these moments need translating. They’re immediately human. Every recording becomes part of a growing global collection that can be explored individually or experienced through Earth Radio, a continuously evolving stream shaped entirely by community contributions. The more people contribute, the richer and more diverse the experience becomes. Alongside the archive, Connected Earth includes Ambient Radio for creating evolving soundscapes from community recordings where sounds are stretched, overlayed, reversed, and can have user effects applied. We also have Resonance Tables for discovering related sounds and places, and Resonance Chains that allow recordings to be connected (chained) together into journeys spanning countries, cultures, and time zones. Together they transform individual moments into something larger than a collection of uploads. Rather than likes, Connected Earth uses Resonations. Small acknowledgements that a sound resonated with someone else. No user account, No follower counts. No popularity contests. No pressure to perform. Just people sharing moments. For those looking for calm, Ambient Mode transforms community recordings into evolving soundscapes that can be used for focus, reflection, relaxation, or simply feeling connected to somewhere else in the world. The result is less of a social network and more of a shared listening experience. The project was designed and built using Figma’s evolving ecosystem, including Figma Agents (Conversation & Moods), Make, AI-assisted (ChatGPT > validation) workflows, and iterative prototyping. What began as a conversation with design tools quickly became an exploration of how technology might help us feel a little more connected to one another. Connected Earth is fully desktop and mobile compatible, allowing people to contribute, discover, listen, and explore wherever they happen to be. In a world increasingly driven by content, Connected Earth is an experiment in presence. A reminder that while we may speak different languages, we often experience the same rain, the same wind, the same birdsong, and the same quiet. And perhaps that matters more than we think.

Love the idea, Lee! Being focused on what matters most, the small details of life. No pressure, no engagement, no likes... Just seeing the awesome world that we have from our chairs

Most people think design starts with colors and ends with pixels.

I see it differently.

For me, design starts with questions.

Why do users leave? Why doesn’t the product convert? Why does a feature make sense for the business but feel confusing to customers?

I’m Viktoriia, a UI/UX designer based in Denmark 🇩🇰 and originally from Ukraine 🇺🇦.

Over the years I’ve designed websites, mobile applications, and digital products across multiple industries, helping businesses transform complex ideas into clear and intuitive user experiences.

What I enjoy most is finding clarity inside complexity. Sometimes that means redesigning a user flow. Sometimes it means creating a design system. Sometimes it means helping a business understand what problem they’re actually trying to solve.

Lately I’ve also been exploring how AI can improve the design process—not to replace creativity, but to spend less time on repetitive work and more time on thinking, strategy, and user experience.

I’m joining Contra to meet founders, builders, and creative people who care about creating products that genuinely help people.

If you’re building something ambitious, I’d love to hear about it. 🚀

Hi Viktoriia! 😊 I love your perspective that design starts with questions, not pixels. And the visual you chose for this post immediately caught my attention — such a vibrant and memorable introduction.

Wishing you lots of exciting opportunities and meaningful connections on Contra! 🚀