The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Related posts
I love the dark version. It's cool
Did you know your home reflects how much you read?
Not a metaphor. A literal one.
Add a book. Set a timer. Watch your apartment slowly come alive as you read. Dust clears in real time. Rooms bloom from neglect to warmth. Stop reading and watch it all fade back.
The Problem
Most reading trackers are lists. Cold. Forgettable. They record what you have not done without making you feel anything about it. You open the app, see a number, close the app. Nothing changes inside you.
Shelf Life is built around a different belief. Your habits should live somewhere. They should breathe. They should have consequences you can see.
Your bedroom holds the book you read before sleep. Your kitchen holds the article you meant to finish over coffee. Your study holds the essay you keep putting off. Read consistently and each space blooms back to life through an organic dust clearing animation driven by your actual reading time. Neglect your reading and the dust returns. Your home becomes a mirror of your habits. Honest and quiet and impossible to ignore.
I deliberately chose not to let users upload or read books inside the app. The moment you can read inside a tracker it stops being a tracker and starts competing with the experience of actually holding a book. Shelf Life honours the ritual of reading without replacing it.
How It Was Built
I started with a design philosophy before I started with a prompt. Warmth. Craft. Human first. Every decision was made to make the user feel something not just complete a task.
The isometric apartment and all ten room images including the neglected and bloomed states for each of the five rooms were generated entirely using Figma Weave. I used Figma for rapid design ideation and layout exploration before moving into Figma Make.
In Figma Make I built the full app in React and TypeScript. The core technical challenge was the dust clearing animation. It uses an SVG mask system with organic circular spots growing via requestAnimationFrame running in parallel with the reading timer. Each spot has its own delay and duration so the reveal feels natural and alive rather than mechanical. The same spots reverse in mirror order when the room returns to neglected. The animation runs both ways. Forward when you read. Backward when you stop.
Room specific ambient music plays in each space. The bedroom has soft rain and piano. The kitchen has morning acoustic warmth. The living room has fireplace crackle. The study is near silence. Each room sounds like it feels.
Tools Used
Figma Weave for AI image generation across all ten room backgrounds
Figma for design ideation and layout
Figma Make for the full app built in React and TypeScript
The Moment That Matters
Start a reading timer. Watch your room slowly clean itself in real time. Organic dust spots grow across the image revealing the bloomed version beneath. It is not a progress bar. It is not a percentage. It is your home breathing back to life because you chose to read.
When the timer ends the room holds its bloomed state then gradually returns to neglect. The direction of the animation tells you everything about your relationship with reading that week.
Most people go quiet when they watch it happen for the first time.
Excellent presentation 👏
Kids don’t defeat fear by reading advice.
They understand it better when they can see it, shape it, shrink it, rename it, and laugh at it.
That’s the idea behind Monster Movie Studio — a cinematic interactive cartoon experience where children turn big fears into funny little animated monsters.
Instead of building another dashboard or basic kids app, I wanted this to feel like a playable cartoon episode.
A child can:
→ create a clay-like 3D monster
→ choose what made the monster feel big
→ drag magical tools onto it
→ direct a tiny cartoon scene
→ shrink the scary shadow
→ turn a roar into music
→ make the monster dance
→ transform it into a tiny helper
→ print a movie poster
→ share a gentle parent note
The whole experience is designed around one principle:
Every action should speak.
Not just buttons.
Not static cards.
Not a form with cute colors.
A tap should change the scene.
A drag should transform the monster.
A completed action should feel cinematic.
A child should feel like they are directing a tiny animated movie.
Built with Figma Make for the Config Makeathon.
Monster Movie Studio — turn big fears into funny little cartoons.
Love how visual this feels. Not a normal app, more like an interactive animated experience.
Trending
Claude
Claude has entered the design space. How are you using Claude Design?
Contra University
Learn from expert creatives how to earn more using next-gen AI tools.
MagicPath
The canvas is infinite, and exploration is becoming the workflow. How are you using MagicPath?
creativeaiflow
Creative AI workflows are evolving. What tools do you use, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
freelancerlife
Freelancer life is wins, pivots, and everything in between. What’s yours right now?