Every Adventure Has a Beginning
At WeHack, a 24-hour hackathon for women and non-binary technologists, our challenge was simple but open-ended: “Adventure is Out There.”
Inspired by stories like Alana Nichols’ journey of resilience, we asked ourselves: What does adventure look like in the digital age, and how can we encourage more of it?
We envisioned Escapade, a mobile app that makes exploration feel accessible and exciting by combining goal-setting with social accountability, real-time inspiration, and gamified experiences.
Design process
Double Diamond
Research & Discovery
Understanding the Problem: Why We Don’t Act on Adventure
We began by exploring why people often dream of adventure but rarely pursue it. Secondary research revealed some common patterns:
With limited time, we conducted internal structured interviews and mapped an empathy canvas to clarify user needs.
Users need a bucket list app that inspires action, reduces overwhelm, and builds community around goals.
With limited time, we conducted internal structured interviews and mapped an empathy canvas to clarify user needs.
Emily’s calendar is packed, but her curiosity never slows down. From scaling cliffs to mastering Spanish verbs, she’s always chasing her next personal milestone.
Doing so helped us identify emotional and behavioral drivers behind action—or inaction.
Competitive Analysis
We analyzed 3 leading bucket list apps to understand what’s missing from current solutions.
Spoiler Alert:
Escapade bridges the gap by turning personal growth into a social, gamified adventure—offering customizable challenges, friend invites, and progress tracking that competitors lack.
How might we design a bucket list app that encourages bold exploration while building social accountability and ongoing engagement?
We narrowed our product goals to three UX pillars:
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Develop: Ideation & Wireframing
Sketching the Vision
With only 24 hours, we sketched lo-fi concepts to define core flows before building out hi-fi screens in Figma.
Design and development happened simultaneously. As the sole designer, I worked closely with three engineers—passing off screens the moment they were ready for testing. This live iteration cycle helped us stay aligned and build trust fast.
Despite the 24-hour crunch, we maintained clarity by focusing on experience flow over excessive feature sets.
Where intentions become commitments
Manage and track personal goals—integrated with social features to encourage action, not just list-making
Adventures are better together
Swipe to accept or decline challenge invitations, turning goal-setting into a dynamic, shared experience
Motivate through friendly competition
See how you rank among friends based on completed goals—fostering healthy, private motivation
Celebrate progress, inspire others
View friends’ accomplishments in a social feed that celebrates progress and sparks new ideas
From “I don’t know what to add” to “Let’s go”
Find curated goal ideas across categories like “Extreme” and “Chill”—helping users turn “I don’t know what to do” into “Let’s go”
Judges praised our structured UI, accessible layout, and social engagement features
The "Challenge a Friend" function was highlighted as a standout idea
Every judge agreed: Escapade transformed bucket lists from passive notes into interactive, community-powered journeys
What I Learned
Collaborate cross-functionally in a high-stakes, fast-moving environment.
Prioritize features under extreme time pressure
Lead a design direction while staying open to live feedback
If I Had More Time...
Add AI-powered adventure recommendations
Develop deeper community integration features
Expand the challenge system with streaks, badges, and shared timelines
Shoutout to my brilliant teammates—your creativity, commitment, and coding magic brought this vision to life in just 24 hours. Couldn’t have asked for a better crew.
