Bandaa

Bandaa app icon — original 1024 × 1024 image
Choose an event type — real app screen, without a device frame

Inspiration

After a wedding, a birthday or a trip, everyone has photos, but they are scattered across phones and group chats. Bandaa gives the group something to experience together during the event, then a story to revisit afterward.

What it does

Create a private event, choose its type, and invite guests with a link or QR code. Photo Missions give people a reason to notice details, connect with each other and capture different points of view. The next day, the photos become a shared album with chapters and moments, so guests can rediscover the parts of the event they missed.

The first discovery is hands-on: try a photo Mission, take and keep a picture, then explore sample albums before creating your own event. The experience stays inside the invited group, with photo reporting and removal controls.

How we built it

Bandaa is built with React Native, Expo and TypeScript for iPhone, iPad and Android. Convex manages the event lifecycle, shared data and scheduled Missions. Cloudflare R2 stores the media. The album is reconstructed from capture times, optional location metadata and synchronized photos, without generative AI.

RevenueCat powers the Organizer Pass: a one-time purchase for future events with larger capacities and video. The mobile purchase flow and purchase events connect to the event access rules, while joining an event and reading the shared album remain part of the core experience.

Challenges we ran into

The hard part was making several phones contribute to one coherent story: reliable media uploads, timed Missions, consistent access rules and an album that remains readable across different languages and screen sizes. We also worked to make the first discovery feel useful immediately, instead of asking people to prepare an event before they could understand the app.

Accomplishments

Bandaa is available on the App Store and Google Play. The demo follows the real photo Mission and camera on an iPhone, explores a sample album, and shows event creation. The visual language carries the feel of a photo journal through paper surfaces, Polaroid frames, expressive typography and tactile album navigation.

What we learned

A shared gallery alone does not explain why guests should contribute. Giving them a concrete Mission at the right moment makes the camera part of the event. Organizing the result into chapters makes it easier to revisit together.

What's next

Improve the first discovery and the clarity of event preparation, collect feedback from real groups, and keep refining reliability and the shared album experience.