Hot potato

A silly but sincere experiment on mindful screen time and fast design, powered by AI tools like Cursor and Figma Make

Year
2025

Client
Me, Myself, & My Scrolling Habits

THE IDEA

The concept isn’t disrupting but it’s a small problem I deal with daily. So why not try to design and build something that could help and learn about some tools in the process? You get a cute little potato who starts off fresh and well-rested. The longer you stay on distracting apps, the more cooked he gets. At each stage, his face and mood change a bit. He never yells at you or forces you to stop. He just lets you know how he’s doing.

There’s even a “Let me rot” button if you’re just having a bad day and need a distraction. Good day, or bad, I don’t need an app making me feel guilty. A gentle reminder is enough.

Project Overview

Hot Potato is a playful screen time widget I designed for myself after realizing how often I was doom scrolling. The concept is simple: the more time you spend on your phone, the hotter your potato gets. He starts fresh, gets a little toasty, ends up fully baked, and finally just kind of burns out, like our brains.

why did i make this?

Like a lot of people, I know when I’ve scrolled too long. But most screen time apps either make me feel guilty or are annoying and too easy to dismiss.

I wanted something gentler, funnier, and less intrusive. I thought, what if instead of feeling guilty, I just… felt a little bad for Tater (Hot Potato’s mascot)? This wasn't about behavior change at scale. It was about creating something that would gently nudge me out of the habit, or allow me to doom scroll if it’s what I needed that day and not make me feel guilty about it.

This project was mostly for me. But in making it, I started thinking about how I could simplify the way I design and testing how fast I could bring something to life using tools like Figma, Cursor, and AI illustration tools.

Key Features

  • Scroll Limits: Access and adjust the temperature settings for individual units, areas, or entire sites with real-time updates.

  • Gentle Nudges Before Limit: View current temperature data for all units within a building.

  • Home Screen Progress Widget: Set and manage user access to HVAC controls, ensuring security and efficiency.

Tools I used

Usually I start with research, task flows, and low fidelity wireframes. This time I skipped all of that and focused on what would make this feel fun and real right away. I knew what I wanted to feel and started sketching.

📝 PEN & PAPER

Before jumping into any software, I always start with pen and paper. It helps me clear my head, slow down, and get to the core of what I’m building. I used it to:

  • Sketch rough screens and mascot states

  • Write out the problem statement in plain language

  • Jot ideas for the potato’s emotional arc and notification tone

  • Visually map out how the app might nudge without nagging

It’s low-tech, but it’s fast and grounding. Especially for something playful like Hot Potato, starting on paper helped me focus on the feeling before the features.

🧠 Cursor

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor built on top of VS Code. Think of it like having a design-savvy engineer quietly pair-programming with you. I used it to:

  • Sketch out logic and behaviors in plain language or pseudocode

  • Rapidly prototype interaction logic or widget functionality

  • Ask “how would this work?” and get instant, code-informed answers

  • Understand how an iOS widget might work technically

  • Learn the basics of setting up a project in Xcode.

🎨 Figma Make

Figma Make helped me to loosen the reigns on my process and also inspired me with its outputs. I used it to:

  • Auto-generate and remix UI patterns on screens

  • Quickly scaffold variations of layouts or interactions

  • Explore visual directions while I’m still figuring out tone or how I want to limit the app

  • Iterate faster without needing to redraw every little thing

These tools don’t replace my creativity, but they helped me create an idea in less time, and proved that this could be valuable in my work process to get a concept or iteration out to a client or teammate faster.

What I learned

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What I learned ⁎

Tater’s progression

Similar to our brains, I wanted to show that something is getting impacted by our scrolling habits, but not necessarily make us feel so guilty or ashamed that we wouldn’t want to see a nudge day to day.

  • Have enough states that you’re not immediately penalized and kicked out of the app

  • Have an opacity behind the notification instead of having a jarring interruption to your scrolling

  • Make it a little fun and humorous

silly can be worthwhile

This project reminded me that even silly ideas can be thoughtful and worthwhile. Sometimes a potato can be a better mirror than metrics.

  • I don’t need to force wireframes into every project. Not everything has to start from a flow

  • Humor is a powerful design tool when paired with care

  • Tools like Cursor and Figma helped me move fast without sacrificing quality. I had something testable and delightful in days, not weeks

home screen widget

results & impact

I didn’t make Hot Potato to fix my screen habits. I made it because I was tired of feeling bad about them. And because it would be the perfect side project to help explore some new AI tools that I could put under my belt and integrate into my process with clients.