03
Waitscape
Project Overview
Waitscape is a location-aware shared board that activates when strangers are stuck waiting in the same place, whether a train stop, a waiting room, or a line, giving that fleeting overlap somewhere to go. Built in 36 hours, and won first place for CATALYST 2026.
Role
Product Designer
Skills
Visual Design
Product Design
Timeline
March 2026 (36 hours!)
Team
Kaylie Nguyen
the moment it started…
what happened to meet-cutes?
I was in NYC for spring break, waiting for the train, and seeing everyone (including me) pull out their phones within seconds. And I thought about my parents, who didn't have that escape route and had to just… be there, and how that slight inconvenience made people more aware of their surroundings, which is probably why their generation has so many meet-cutes, and we don't.
Meet-cutes are gone, and even Zohran Mamdani had to go on Hinge to find the love of his life. We are physically surrounded by strangers yet more isolated than ever.
The idea
Turning Waiting into a Common Ground to Foster Community
The brief was "waiting rooms."
The obvious direction was to make an app to pass time productively, rather than doomscrolling. But our main competitor could easily become just another feed people mindlessly scroll through while waiting. That's paradoxical: we'd be pulling people deeper into their phones to solve a phone problem. But we also can't just take people off their phones and into an awkward IRL interaction cold. So instead, we bring the shared moment into the phone.
The waiting room isn't a place to meet people, but a forced shared context. Everyone at the same bus stop, the same clinic, the same line is experiencing the exact same moment together. That's actually rare. The design opportunity is to make that brief shared moment feel alive.
INtroducing…
Waitscape
From there the concept came together quickly: a location-aware collaborative board that exists only for that day, at that location, with those people.
Waitscape is a location-aware shared board that activates when you're physically present at a waiting spot, be it a train stop, a clinic, a line. We turn that wasted, isolating time into a moment of accidental community, giving people something worth reaching for instead of retreating into their screens.
… and its main features!
simple entry point
Location-aware board joining via QR code
Scan a QR code at a physical spot and you're in, without an immediate account. Once you create an account, the app can identify whenever you're in a Waitscape location.
Ephemeral shared board
Each board exists only for that day, at that location, with whoever contributed.
You have to add something to save the board. Waiting boards are immutable once the day ends, and you can't edit, only keep and revisit it. Only you and the strangers who waited with you get to keep that memory together.
everyone loves gacha!
Randomized collectible rewards for contributing
Every contributon gives you a random trinket. Some are location-locked, only unlockable at specific spots, which turns waiting somewhere into something you might actually look forward to. The souvenir of a moment you shared with strangers, adding up to a cabinet of small things you've accumulated from waiting.
wrapping up waitscape
we won (Yay!)
For the first 24 hours,
Kaylie led the research. I came up with the concept and visual direction, then owned the pre-joining experience, detect & join flow, login, trinket system, and the home screens — board history, trinket collection, daily summary. Kaylie built out the board screens.
12 hours left,
We took a good night's rest (sleep is important!), then rushed to get the product video recorded. We submitted just in time, and ended up winning 1st place for Track 1: Waiting Rooms in the Catalyst 2026 Designathon.