tl;dr
Reelwish was a Figma Make-a-thon concept: hand gestures trigger real-time emotional reactions — joy, surprise, support, connection. The discipline was four emotions, not forty. Two months later the same DNA became Festeo — an AR video greeting app for life's milestones, shipped solo as a native SwiftUI iOS app. Pick an occasion, wear an AR prop, choose a vibe, read a teleprompter script, record a 15-second wish, and send it as a link anyone can open.
Shipped
Apple App Store, May 2026
4
occasions with props + scripts
41
teleprompter scripts
Why does congratulating someone online still feel so flat?
We can send 4K video across the world instantly. But when a friend has a baby, we still type three words and a balloon emoji. The moment is huge. The expression is tiny.
Reelwish framed this as an emotional expression problem. That was true, but it wasn't sellable. Nobody opens the App Store searching for expressive communication. They search for a birthday video.
“We built powerful networks for sharing content, and left almost nothing for sharing a moment.”
Four emotions, four gestures — built in Figma Make
The hackathon constraint forced better decisions: fewer features, clearer concept, sharper narrative.
Joy
Open hands raised — a natural celebratory gesture readable by a front camera in under half a second.
Surprise
Hands to face — instinctive and cross-cultural.
Support
Open palm toward the screen — a gesture of offering.
Connection
A wave or point — acknowledgment of presence.
From speculative concept to shippable product
Festeo repackaged the same DNA into something concrete: video wishes for birthdays, weddings, new babies, and graduations. Four occasions, not infinite ones. AR props you wear — party crown, graduation cap, baby bonnet, bow tie. Vibe-based scripts in hype, heartfelt, or funny. A 15-second cap. Share via link — no app download for the recipient.
“A hackathon project isn't a finish line. It's a thesis you can test, narrow, and ship.”
What shipped in V1
Full creator flow: occasion → prop → vibe → script → record → preview → share.
Voice-synced teleprompter with forward-only fuzzy matching — the hardest feature.
41 scripts across four milestones, filtered by tone and relationship.
Supabase backend for scripts, video upload, and watch links.
Native SwiftUI for iOS 17+, renamed Reelwish → Festeo, migrated infrastructure, submitted to the App Store.
What shipping a speculative concept taught me
A concept needs an occasion to become a product.
Tying Reelwish to milestones made every decision easier — occasions defined the props, scripts, categories, and the reason to download.
Constraints are what make recording possible.
A teleprompter and a 15-second cap remove the two reasons people don't record themselves: freezing up and overthinking.
The recipient's experience is the product.
They tap a link and watch. Designing for the side of the screen that does the least work was the highest-leverage decision.
Discipline carries across a pivot.
Four emotions in Reelwish became four occasions in Festeo. The instinct to limit scope survived the jump from concept to shipped product.
Key Takeaways
- 1Interaction design is emotional design — timing and feedback are the language of emotional experience.
- 2Four emotions, not forty — unlimited expressiveness creates decision paralysis.
- 3A concept needs an occasion to become a product — milestones made Festeo shippable.
- 4The recipient's experience is the product — link-first delivery, no download required.
- 5Shipping is its own design skill — research, naming, infrastructure, native iOS, App Store submission.
ARKit face tracking with props that follow your face in real time. Gesture detection — the original Reelwish concept, finally native on iOS in V2.
ARKit face tracking with props that follow your face in real time. Gesture detection — the original Reelwish concept, finally native on iOS in V2.
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