In December 2025, I embarked on a three-week sprint to build 12deseos.com. A product designed to turn a beloved physical family tradition into a digitized one, reimagining what this experience could look like when brought to life online.
UX designer
2 day design exploration
⟡Competitive analysis
⟡Micro-interaction design
⟡Interface mockups
I was inspired to build 12 deseos when flying back to Seattle after visiting my family in Atlanta. When inspiration hit, I quickly grabbed my iPad and started visualizing my ideas on Procreate.
The idea was simple. I wanted to digitize the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes when the clock strikes 12 on New Years. You make one wish for each month of the year, and it is believed that by doing this you are bringing good fortune with you for the upcoming year.
Traditionally, you would make your wishes with physical grapes when the clock strikes 12 at midnight. This is a fun experience and it makes New Years feel like New Years. However, after making my wishes and the New Year festivities were over, I would hardly remember what my wishes were for the upcoming year. This is why I decided to build 12 deseos, to compliment the physical grape wishing tradition with a digitized version that would allow me to go back and see what my wishes were for the New Year.
I started off by drafting high-level product requirements as this project helped me think more like a product manager.
I also had a few constraints I had to think through. Time was the first one. I needed to design, build, test, and launch my product within three weeks since I wanted this to launch a few days before New Years. I dedicated my time after work to focus on building out 12 deseos.
I went back and forth about which tool I wanted to use to actually build out my product. I was in between trying out AI-powered prototyping and code-generation tools such as V0, Loveable, and FigmaMake, “vibe coding” my way through the product. However, I ultimately decided to use Webflow to build out my product since I was already familiar with how to build, launch, and host a website using the platform and this would save me time from having to learn how to use new tools.
I also thought about details such as whether or not 12 deseos should be a login or non-login experience and what the wish storage experience would look like after a user is done completing their 12 wishes.
The information architecture was fairly simple. The product consisted of the main homepage with a call-to-action to make wishes for the new year. Users were then redirected to the main workflow for creating wishes. Users select their grapes and this takes them to the first month of the year. After a user types in their wish for the first month, a call-to-action button takes them to the next following month until they reach December. Once their final wish is made, they submit their wishes and a unique URL is returned to the user. They can copy and save their unique URL to view their wishes anytime throughout the year.
To create a sense of urgency, I decided to intentionally add a countdown to the main homepage of 12 deseos that showed the user how much time they had left to make wishes for the New Year. After the timer was done, it would automatically start counting down to the next time users can make wishes and the CTA to make wishes for the year would disappear.
To encourage mindful intention-setting, I designed the wish-making flow to mimic the tradition of eating a grape for each of the twelve months. By limiting users to one wish at a time and removing the ability to edit previous entries, I created a linear, reflective, and singular experience, mirroring the physical, unrepeatable nature of making a wish while eating a grape.
After submitting all 12 wishes, 12 deseos returns a unique URL link to the user that can be copied and saved. This allows users to revisit their unique wishes anytime throughout the year.
I decided to make 12 deseos a non-login experience to simplify user onboarding and drastically reduce the amount of engineering effort required to build a login experience.
Instead, I built a backend infrastructure using Airtable and Make. Airtable was used to store individual user wishes and generate a unique userID for each submission. The data gathered for each unique submission was then connected to my integration setup in Make, which is an automation platform that allows you to connect various applications and services to automate workflows and tasks. After a user submits their wishes, Airtable would store them, send them to Make, and Make would generate the unique URL returned back to users on Webflow.
This was probably the most fun and frustrating part of the entire project. It required me to learn more about how data is transferred and how to connect different applications and services, as well as, required lots of testing to ensure everything was running correctly as I had designed.
It was extremely satisfying when everything worked and I was able to return unique URLs to the users of 12 deseos. This is when everything started to feel like a real working product. It was my very own aha moment. :^)
12 deseos went live on 12/29, a day after the original launch date as I worked on final product, UX, and technical details. I shared the launch announcement with family and friends and was happy to start seeing wish submissions come in and positive sentiment about the product itself. This was my first time designing, building and launching a live product on my own, so this was a big moment for me.
By day, I am a UX designer simplifying complex enterprise cost management tools for the cloud. This project was very different from my day to day work. I became the designer, the product manager, and the engineer orchestrating the full end-to-end product development cycle.
<01> ⋆｡° I quickly learned how important it is to define product requirements early, balancing constraints such as time and effort. I made trade offs between what was a must-have for the product experience vs a nice-to-have.
<02> ⋆｡° As a designer, I used my interaction and visual design skills to design an experience that was usable, as well as, delightful. I recognized that every design decision that I made led to a new engineering requirement. It was important for me to balance every design decision with the amount of engineering effort required to build it.
<03> ⋆｡° And for the first time, you could call me front-end and back-end engineer Andrea, as I worked with code for the first time to add real functionality to my product, revealing how a product is really brought to life and launched.
<04> ⋆｡° As for next steps... there are so many ideas to explore. I'd love to revisit the experience for viewing wishes. As new wishes are made for years to come, there's opportunity to think about how to organize wishes for users. I would also like to collect user emails and send each person a reminder of what their wish was for each month so that they are never forgotten.
This project inspires me to continue exploring my curiosities and building tools that are fun, experimental, and whimsical. Through this project, I was able to bring my new understanding on how products are developed to how I think about and build products in my day-to-day life. I’m excited to continue with more design side-quests and sharing my experience with others.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check out 12deseos.com on 12/28 to make your wishes for 2027. :)
2025 · designed in figma and built in webflow in seattle . ݁₊ ⊹ .
conversation is my favorite medium
