GenCap

Inspiration

GenCap was inspired by the rising demand for video content creation, from short-form reels to long-form storytelling. As more people create videos for social, educational, or personal use, tools like Adobe Express play a critical role in making content creation more accessible.

While Express excels in design, we identified a critical gap: the subtitle workflow. The existing transcription tool, while functional, lacks accuracy, and editing individual subtitle segments feels disconnected and tedious.

To validate this, we interviewed several creators and content editors. They confirmed our observations: while Adobe Express is beginner-friendly, the subtitle process remains fragmented.

These challenges led us to create GenCap, a seamless AI-powered subtitle tool that helps creators generate, refine, and style captions — all within Adobe Express, and all without the technical burden.

What It Does

GenCap enhances Adobe Express by providing a complete AI-powered subtitle workflow.

Our Smart Subtitle Generation feature transcribes audio from video projects or separate audio files. It intelligently segments sentences into time-stamped subtitle sections. For videos without audio, creators can use our AI Brainstorm tool to describe their project and generate relevant, on-brand captions.

Next, GenCap features an intuitive AI Writing Assistant to polish and perfect subtitle content. It checks spelling, improves fluency, and lets users adjust tone based on their audience, from playful to professional.

Finally, GenCap introduces Creative Support & Styling Tools to manage the look and feel of captions. Users can save and reuse fonts, colors, and animations via the Style Library. They can also store position presets, fine-tune layouts, and switch between style sets. Grouped subtitle layers simplify timeline management and ensure visual consistency across scenes.

How We Built It

Our development journey began with user-centered research, conducting interviews with creators to deeply understand their challenges with subtitles, especially within Adobe Express. This research directly shaped GenCap's core features.

We explored Adobe Express’s documentation and platform capabilities to ensure our ideas could integrate naturally. For example, our Style Library complements Adobe's native font tools, allowing creators to design styles within Express and reuse them in GenCap.

We also took inspiration from Express’s built-in AI features, extending the experience to caption writing and idea generation.

We created wireframes in Figma, then developed high-fidelity prototypes with detailed interactions and user flows. While we didn’t code a working add-on, we carefully aligned our prototype with Adobe’s developer documentation to ensure feasibility within the platform.

Challenges We Ran Into

As a designer-led team, we faced limitations around implementation, especially with AI functionality that would require deeper technical development.

We had a small sample of user interviews and lacked time for proper usability testing, which limited our ability to fully validate GenCap’s potential.

Scoping was also a challenge: we had many exciting ideas, but had to prioritize features that felt both impactful and realistically buildable in the hackathon timeframe.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

We’re proud of how thoughtfully we integrated AI and design within the Adobe Express experience. GenCap doesn’t just add features — it introduces a streamlined, end-to-end workflow that helps creators go from idea to polished, captioned video faster and more confidently.

We also received enthusiastic feedback from creators. Many expressed strong interest in using GenCap, especially for voiceless content or simplifying repetitive editing tasks.

What We Learned

This project reinforced how essential a smooth, intuitive workflow is for creator success, especially in a fast-paced, trend-driven media environment.

We learned that great UX is about removing friction, enabling flexibility, and making tools feel like an extension of the creator’s voice.

We also gained experience designing within platform constraints, balancing creative ambition with realistic execution. This hackathon pushed us to think not just as designers, but as strategists and future collaborators.

What’s Next for GenCap

Next, we’ll conduct usability testing to validate our design with a wider range of creators and iterate based on feedback.

We’re also eager to collaborate with developers to bring GenCap to life. Our prototype is structured for handoff and ready to evolve into a real Adobe Express Add-on.

Looking ahead, we hope to expand GenCap’s capabilities with multi-language support, deeper integration with Adobe’s native AI services, and more advanced features for collaborative editing.

Built With

• adobe-creative-sdk
• adobe-illustrator
• adobe-premiere
• figma
• javascript
• openai