Inside AI Collaborate's 24-Hour Adobe Express Add-On Hackathon

AI-powered creativity: Discover how a student club partnered with Adobe Express to build innovative add-ons in a single day.

Sayan Jain is a recent graduate from Santa Clara University (SCU) in California, where he earned a double degree in Computer Science and Business. He helped found AI Collaborate and is its former president.

All Images and videos in this blog post by Perkin Yang.

In spring 2025, AI Collaborate — Santa Clara University’s student-run AI club — partnered with Adobe Express to host a landmark 24-hour hackathon. Our mission? To bring together creativity, AI, and real-world problem-solving on campus.

With support from Adobe’s Developer Platform team and early access to cutting-edge AI tools, more than 100 students from all majors converged to build next-gen Adobe Express add-ons. Here’s a look back at how we conceived, planned, and executed the event, and why it’s only the beginning of our collaboration with Adobe.

Watch the full hackathon story

Concept and collaboration with Adobe

On a busy college campus, gaining and sustaining student interest in an event can be a challenge. Following the success of SCU’s first AI Summit, which we hosted, our AI Collaborate board wanted to keep that momentum going. One of the best ways to do this was to allow people the opportunity to see the impact of their own efforts.

After brainstorming with Aubrey Cattell (VP, Developer Platform & Partner Ecosystem at Adobe), who took part in a panel at the AI Summit, we landed on an immersive 24-hour hackathon focused on building Adobe Express add-ons.

Leveraging Adobe’s expertise, we put together a format that balanced technical challenges with creative freedom, ensuring participants could explore both design and AI integrations.

Students participating in the AI Summit at Santa Clara University, hosted by AI Collaborate, which led to the Adobe Express add-on hackathon.

Planning and preparation

With the concept solidified, the real work began. Adobe’s developer advocates, including Ingo Eichel and Taylor Krusen, were instrumental in shaping the event: from budget and marketing to competition format and judging criteria. Meanwhile, AI Collaborate handled campus outreach, logistics, and judge recruitment.

The month before the hackathon, we held two hands-on workshops (one online and one in person) with Taylor, who helped familiarize SCU students with the Adobe Express platform. In the weeks leading up to the event, our team plastered posters across campus to attract students of any major to join in and compete.

We also assembled a panel of eight judges, featuring Adobe leaders and industry experts, and developed evaluation criteria emphasizing innovation, usability, and responsible AI usage.

The marketing of the hackathon made it clear that the event was open to all major students.

Hackathon highlights and winning projects

Right from kickoff, the Adobe Express team had a big surprise for us: They announced that the participants would have early access to AI developer tools for the duration of the hackathon . This gave teams an extra boost, enabling rapid prototyping and advanced innovative features.

In just 24 hours, teams created 20 new functional Adobe Express add-on prototypes, and eight projects emerged as winners (and 28 individual winners) across six prize categories, totaling over $3,000 in prize money:

“The caliber and quality of projects far exceeded my expectations of what’s possible in 24 hours of building an Adobe Express add-on.”
— Taylor Krusen, Senior Developer Advocate at Adobe

Watch the winning teams present their solutions

The team behind SEOBooster, which won two categories, created an add-on that seamlessly integrates real-time SEO suggestions (for keywords, alt text, and titles, etc) into Adobe Express without disrupting the creative workflow.

One of the judges, Aubrey Cattell, said: “I love the marrying of art and science in a way that will provide results-based guidance to solopreneurs and small businesses.”

Students were also invited to provide feedback that could help improve the Adobe Express platform via two online surveys: “Best Idea for Platform Improvements” and “Best Idea for Developer Tool Usage.” In return, winners and lead organizers received an exclusive tour of Adobe headquarters in San Jose, offering them invaluable insights into the industry, company culture, and product vision.

Learn more about all the submissions, including the winners, of the AI Collaborate Hackathon powered by Adobe Express at DevPost.

Impact and next steps

AI Collaborate's goal is to serve the community around us, teaching and preparing the SCU community for a future where AI is everywhere.

This hackathon achieved that mission to a T. The early access to developer tools showed developers how AI integrates into creative workflows, with the most successful teams leveraging AI most effectively.

The event also showcased how AI and creative tooling can democratize software development regardless of technical ability, empowering students from the humanities, business, and STEM alike. Collaborating across disciplines taught teams to synthesize user research, AI-driven ideation, and hands-on coding.

Students across various majors formed teams to work on their Adobe Express add-ons.

After the event, participants had a chance to network with industry leaders, including startup founders Andrew Mayne and Brett Rounsaville (Interdimensional), engineers Jose Alvarado (NVIDIA) and Krishna Srinivasan (Google), and Susan Kennedy (professor at SCU).

The ripple effect was immediate: just one month later, another student club hosted an Intel-powered hackathon! This demonstrates how our connection to Silicon Valley gives SCU students unique access to companies pushing the boundaries of technological innovation.

The partnership with Adobe was key to showing us the possibilities, and we hope to be able to expand on this in the future. Adobe was one of the first companies to take a chance on a group of SCU students who came together and called themselves AI Collaborate, and we hope to continue working together for future hackathons!

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Aubrey Cattell, Ingo Eichel, Taylor Krusen, Kerri Shotts, Holly Schinsky, Matt Ladner, Ruben Rincon, and the rest of the Adobe team for making this hackathon possible.

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A note from Adobe

Ingo Eichel, Sr Manager, Adobe Developer Community, said:

This was our team’s first in-person, 24-hour hackathon in partnership with a local club at a university. We wanted to create visibility for Adobe Express and inspire the next generation of creators and builders with an easy-to-use developer platform that allows them to bring their own ideas to life, fill gaps they see in the product, or improve creative workflows. Thanks to the AI Collaborate team for the great collaboration.

We have been blown away by how motivated most students and teams have been. It started with the due diligence they did upfront to get an idea of user sentiment and feedback on Adobe Express. Then we watched them use multiple AI tools for all steps, from ideation and evaluation to vibe coding and testing, and as part of their projects. Many teams worked overnight to submit a working prototype and an explainer video for the competition. During the California night, our engineering team in India was on duty to help answer questions and troubleshoot technical issues.

This was not just a fun event: We invited all students to fine-tune their ideas, apply for the Adobe Fund for Design, and finally ship their add-ons to our marketplace. A few of them are now in the making, and we can’t wait to see them published.

Get involved

We look forward to running more developer events with student clubs and sharing what we have learned. Interested in hosting your own Adobe Express hackathon? Reach out to me or the rest of the Adobe Developer Community team. And check out developer.adobe.com/developers-live to find out more and join other upcoming developer events.

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