First Lines
A creative writing tool and small experiment in productive friction. Lottery prompts and low-stakes public voting designed to stimulate creative starting.
- Role
- Designer & Developer
- Client
- Personal research prototype (originally built for Figma Make-thon, 2025)
- Scope
- UX/UI, Writing flows, Interaction design
- Stack
- Figma Make, Figma, Cursor
- When
- 2025
01Overview
Writing tools usually focus on capture and organization. First Lines focused on a moment of high-friction act of beginning.The blank page paralyzes many writers because of the pressure of choosing the "right" opening.
The project tested a simple hypothesis, that a carefully designed combination of controlled randomness and low-stakes social visibility could stimulate more intentional, creative starts without fully removing the writer’s agency or the productive resistance of the blank page.
02Problem
The blank page is rarely just a lack of ideas. It is often a moment of cognitive and emotional pressure: fear of the wrong opening, fear of commitment, fear of exposure. Existing tools usually respond by making the start as frictionless as possible. But constant low-friction access can encourage passive consumption of prompts rather than active thinking.
The question was whether a different balance - surprise + mild social accountability - could train a more engaged starting muscle.
03Approach
I designed First Lines as a focused cognitive experiment rather than a productivity feature.
Core mechanism:
- A lottery of first lines that can be freely redrawn (controlled surprise)
- Immediate private drafting space
- Optional public publishing + community voting framed as interest (“is this interesting enough to continue?”) rather than skill judgment
The goal was not maximum ease. It was to create just enough productive friction and stimulation that the act of beginning required more active engagement — less automatic offloading, more deliberate choice and response.
04Scope of work
05Challenges
Randomness as stimulation vs. disruption
Surprise can spark or freeze.
Lottery as a drawable nudge, never a locked assignment. Ownership remains with the writer.
Social visibility as accountability vs. exposure risk
Public feedback can motivate continuation or shut it down.
Clear separation between private drafting and public continuation, with carefully worded voting language that signals interest rather than evaluation.
Playful energy vs. serious creative work
Too much visual energy risks making the tool feel trivial.
Energetic lottery moments, calm and readable editor once writing begins.
06Outcome
The prototype showed that a small, intentional dose of friction and social visibility can change how people approach the start of a creative piece. Writers engaged with the lottery, drafted, and in some cases published incomplete openings for feedback.
The more important result was the insight itself: the quality of the starting moment can be improved not only by removing barriers, but by carefully designing the right kind of resistance and stimulation.
This experiment belongs to a broader research direction exploring tools that train rather than merely offload thinking — especially at moments of friction, contradiction, or beginning.
07Reflection
Randomness only stimulates when it remains easy to reject.
Social validation only helps when it is clearly framed as interest, not judgment.
If I did it again
If I continued this, I would treat the tool as both product and instrument: log my own cognitive responses while using it, refine the voting language with real writers, and test whether the mechanism produces more memorable, higher-quality openings over time — not just faster ones.