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.