Inspiration
Campus life is full of small moments worth remembering: study dates, extracurricular activities, orientations, birthdays, graduations, and spontaneous hangouts. We wanted to create a simple, fun way for students and youth to turn those moments into a personalised photo-strip keepsake without needing an account, expensive equipment, or complicated editing software.
What it does
Campus Booth is a privacy-first, offline-first photo-strip maker for students and youth.
Users can capture or upload two photos, choose a campus-inspired theme and occasion, customise their photo strip with a title, date, frames, and stickers, then select a mood-matched caption or write their own. The completed strip can be downloaded as a shareable PNG for social media, printing, or saving as a memory.
All photos remain in the user’s browser. Campus Booth does not require sign-in, cloud storage, tracking, or paid API calls.
How we built it
We built Campus Booth with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a lightweight Node.js server.
The app uses the browser MediaDevices API to access the camera, supports photo uploads as an alternative, and uses Canvas to compose the final photo strip and export it as a PNG. Caption suggestions are generated locally from occasion- and theme-aware templates, keeping the experience fast, private, and free to run.
We used Codex with GPT-5.6 throughout the build process to plan the user journey, structure the application, implement camera and retake flows, improve responsive styling, build the Canvas export workflow, debug browser and server issues, and refine documentation.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge was making camera capture work smoothly in a browser while supporting permissions, countdowns, retakes, and users who prefer uploading existing photos. We also needed the final photo-strip export to match what users saw during customisation.
Another challenge was balancing AI-like personalisation with privacy and reliability. Instead of relying on a paid external API, we designed local, themed caption suggestions that work without an account, network request, or usage cost.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Creating a complete flow from camera capture or upload to a downloadable photo-strip keepsake
Designing an experience around real campus occasions rather than making a generic photo editor
Supporting custom themes, captions, stickers, frames, titles, and dates
Keeping user photos entirely on-device and avoiding accounts, cloud storage, and tracking
Shipping a simple project that can be run locally with Node.js and a modern browser
What we learned
We learned that a polished consumer experience depends on the small details: clear permission states, countdown feedback, retake options, responsive layouts, and a reliable export flow.
We also learned that meaningful AI-assisted development does not require a costly runtime AI service. Codex and GPT-5.6 helped us move faster through planning, implementation, debugging, and iteration, while the final product remains private and accessible without API costs.
What's next for Campus Booth
Next, we want to add more campus-specific themes, seasonal event packs, richer sticker collections, and additional strip layouts.
We would also explore optional group-booth modes, QR-based sharing, accessible customisation controls, and an opt-in AI caption enhancement for users who want more personalised caption ideas. Any future online feature would remain optional and preserve the privacy-first core of Campus Booth.
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