Arrival
The opening 90 seconds of a project management tool, built to be understood without a single tooltip. Built for The First Ninety Seconds — design the opening 90 seconds of a product a stranger has never seen. Three-screen onboarding, fully keyboard navigable, AA contrast throughout. The interface is deliberately narrow: one path, done properly, rather than a broad surface that half-works at the deadline.
Gallery
Screens
Arrival — main view
Arrival — result state
On the clock
What shipped, what didn't
Completed in time
Three-screen onboarding, fully keyboard navigable, AA contrast throughout.
Unfinished / faked
Only the onboarding path exists — the app behind it is a stub.
Obstacles
A dependency version mismatch cost six minutes. Pinned it and moved on.
Lessons learned
Scope down before the timer starts, not at minute 20 when you're already committed.
Process
Prompting approach
Started from a single system prompt describing the user and their constraint, then iterated with the assistant on the Arrival data model before writing any interface code. Full prompt log is in the repository under /prompts.
Fairness
Disclosures
Declared by the builder at submission time, visible to judges before scoring.
Judging
Public feedback
Judges' private notes stay private — this is what they chose to say publicly.
Marcus Bell
Founder, Bellwether Studio
Genuinely useful. I would install this. The limitations section is honest, which makes me trust the rest of the submission more.
Discussion
1 comments
Stealing the progressive disclosure pattern for week 3. Fair warning.