Meet the Winners of the First Adobe Express Add-ons Hackathon

Discover how our winners envision extending what users can do on the Adobe Express platform, from a design tool for beginner designers to personalized video analytics.

We recently hosted our first Adobe Express Add-ons Hackathon on DevPost, inviting developers worldwide to pitch creative ideas for extending Adobe Express. Over the past two months, participants submitted proof-of-concepts demonstrating both the technical feasibility and the real-world impact of their Adobe Express add-ons.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the winners and thank everyone who brought so much creativity and innovation to the hackathon. Read on to discover the winning projects and get a sneak peek at what’s next for all participants.

Recap of the Adobe Express Add-ons Hackathon

The Adobe Express Add-ons Hackathon was an exciting opportunity for developers, designers, and creative builders of all backgrounds to bring their ideas to life and shape the future of Adobe Express for millions of users.

To take part, each participant needed to create a video that pitched their idea or concept, explored how to build it as an Adobe Express add-on, and demonstrated their readiness to bring it to life.

We were blown away by the popularity of the event:

Throughout the hackathon, participants were evaluated on five criteria:

  1. Value for Adobe Express users: Who is your target user? How does your add-on make their work faster, easier, or more effective? Does it offer broad value to many or deep value to a specific group?
  2. Innovation ("uniqueness"): Is your add-on creative or unexpected in tech, design, or workflow? If similar ideas exist, how is yours better? What’s original or delightful about it?
  3. Feasibility and intent to build: How have you confirmed the Adobe Express platform supports your add-on’s needs? Did you make a prototype or mockup? What’s your launch plan if you win? Do you have the skills and motivation to deliver?
  4. Relevance to prize categories: Why did you pick this category and how does your add-on fit? If you chose more than one category, why? Which feature best matches the category’s intent?
  5. Clarity of add-on concept: Can a new Adobe Express user quickly grasp what your add-on does and why it’s useful? Does your video clearly show its main use and benefits? Is your core idea easy to communicate?

Meet the winning projects

So without further ado, here are the six grand prize winners for each category:

Most Valuable to Adobe Express Users

StyleSnatch lets users upload a photo of a design they like, automatically extract the layout (including text boxes and shapes), detect the original font using the Adobe font recognition API, and recreate the design in an editable Adobe Express canvas, with modifiable elements and structure.

Best AI-Enhanced Experience

AI Flashcard Maker instantly turns documents and notes into engaging and print-ready flashcards for teachers, utilizing AI and auto-layout.

Best Integration or Workflow Hack

Side Note is a simple Notion-style editor inside Adobe Express that lets users capture ideas, create tasks, and document their creative process in real time.

Best New Video Innovation

Entia provides personalized video analytics, unlocking persona-driven insights for content creators, marketers, and SMBs directly from users’ videos.

Collaboration Catalyst

SaySo transforms how creative teams give and receive feedback. Instead of manually writing long, individual comments, juggling tools, or having to hop on meetings, SaySo lets users record voice feedback in the moment and instantly turns those into actionable, design-linked tasks — right inside Adobe Express.

"Express Yourself" Wildcard

StripCam is a Korean-style four-frame photobooth experience for Adobe Express. Once the strip is captured, it’s automatically added to the Adobe Express canvas, ready to be edited.

What the judges said

“The participants’ creativity energized our whole judging panel,” said Ruben Rincon, group product manager of Adobe Developer Experience. “Everyone thoughtfully validated their ideas through user insights, built quick prototypes to confirm technical feasibility with our Code Playground, and presented their message in the most ingenious and fun ways. A project that particularly resonated with me was StyleSnatch. I was impressed by how it tackled real challenges of a family clothing store, while showcasing important use cases for a broad range of Adobe Express users.”

“The quality and thoroughness of many submissions was stunning,” added Adobe senior product manager Tate Masi. “Participants really took the time to understand Adobe Express, and it was amazing to see how naturally in-tune they were with creators’ needs. Many projects addressed long-standing feedback and pain points we’ve heard from end users — which goes to show how valuable community contributions can be! Side Note in particular stood out to me as very fleshed out, polished, and user friendly. The developer built a highly complementary experience for tracking tasks and ideas seamlessly within the content creation process.”

Explore more add-on ideas at the project gallery of the hackathon

What’s next

The quality of the submissions was truly impressive, making judging a real challenge. While we could only select a handful of winners, there were tons of brilliant ideas ready for development into full-fledged Adobe Express add-ons. We now plan to back additional projects through the Adobe Fund for Design.

And here’s how you can keep the momentum going:

Once again, many thanks to everyone who participated, judged, and supported this hackathon. Your creativity fuels the Adobe Express ecosystem, and together we’re shaping what’s possible on the platform. Join our growing community on Discord and LinkedIn, ask questions on the forum, and get real-time support in our Office Hours.

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