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what a joy it is to be working on a project with someone who has seen me through school, university and now back in the same place - adulting together. we always love a little challenge, so pouring our heart and soul into this made us feel like we're back in uni again!
we hope you find as much delight in our silly little cake builder as much as we had in building it 🫶
Hot take: you deserve a cake today
Not for a promotion. Not for a milestone. Just for getting through it.
Ate that 🎂 lets you name your win, build your cake, and blow out the candles. A silly little ceremony for the small, sometimes unglamorous but deeply human act of showing...
The network for creativity
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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 👏
Hey everyone, excited to be joining the Config Makeathon ☺️
I wanted to create a place where people can anonymously share how their day went and read what others are going through. Sometimes you have something on your mind but no one to tell it to, Dear Diary gives people a space to feel heard and connected.
You can write one entry per day and receive a random flower as a reward. As you keep writing, you collect flowers and eventually unlock a bouquet you can share. The calendar lets you look back at previous days and explore thoughts and stories from people around the world.
Dear Diary is live, tell us what's on your mind ✨
Love seeing different approaches to the Makeathon. This is a thoughtful and well-executed project.
You know that feeling when it's 3am and you have so much going on in your head but nowhere to put it? No one to tell, no diary you trust, just… everything sitting heavy inside you.
That's exactly why I built Vent It.
It's a safe little space where you write everything you've been holding in and watch it disappear into the fog. No storage. No receipts. Just you, your words, and that lighter feeling after.
The background shifts with real time, so if you're venting at 3am, it feels like 3am. It matches your moment.
And you're never fully alone. There's a tiny cat companion that somehow always knows what to say when you're going through it.
I built this because I couldn't find a place like this when I needed one. So I made it.
Try it and tell me if you felt it too 🌫️
Love this idea. Creating a space for reflection and emotional release feels both thoughtful and meaningful. Good luck!
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