Inspiration

Tackling university, working a job (or both), while finding the time for hobbies, relationships, and yourself can be particularly daunting and almost impossible. Everyone works to overcomes these obstacles daily, but without proper tools this can be less than optimal, particularly for folks with ADHD. It's unimaginable for most to live in a world with a cluttered mind list of seemingly hundreds of tasks, and no concept of how much time each might take. However, this is reality for individuals living with ADHD.

Despite multiple task and focus apps already existing our team found many issues:

forgetful to use
frustrating UI
difficult to implement in our current lives. These issues continuing to prevail motivated us to create Unfurl - the perfect app to unfurl messy thoughts into actionable tasks.

What it does

Unfurl uses its key features to help users stay consistent, organize their tasks, and stay motivated throughout the day.

Features:

Brain-dump chat - converts raw thoughts into a prioritized task list
Focus mode with start/pause/resume timer flow
Backend-tracked cumulative focus time per task
Flower rewards after task completion (tier-based)
Daily flower streak tracking (consecutive-day motivation)
Bouquet view of earned flowers

How we built it

For the backend utilized Google ADK in order to build and orchestrate AI agents that can handle multi-step reasoning and task execution. It manages the conversational flow and decision-making logic, making it capable of responding to more complex user input.

Similarly Gemini 2.5 Flash was utilized to power the intelligence of the app allowing for:

Fast, low latency responses.
Ability to understand context
Generating recommendations
Processing natural language

For the frontend we prioritized ensuring that the complex processes were masked by good UI flow, and aesthetics, to guarantee user enjoyment.

Challenges we ran into

In order to maintain a simple user experience our team had to balance requiring limited input, but still provide accuracy. We tackled this by:

Ensuring agents utilize a diverse set of information.
User behaviour used to refine outputs.
Allowing customizability of list regardless, so they user is always in control

What we learned

Building Unfurl taught us a lot about the intersection of AI and human-centred design. We learned that orchestrating multiple AI agents requires careful prompt engineering, particularly around keeping outputs structured and consistent enough for the frontend to consume reliably. We also discovered that perceived simplicity on the frontend often demands significant complexity on the backend, and that the hardest UX problems aren't visual, they're about reducing friction at exactly the right moments.

Having folks with ADHD on our team lead to realize small design decisions — like a flower reward or a single-tap timer — can have an outsized impact on motivation and follow-through.

What's next for Bonita_Unfurl

We see Unfurl growing into a full companion for neurodivergent students and professionals. Immediate next steps include:

Widgets & notifications — ambient reminders that don't require opening the app, keeping Unfurl present without being intrusive
Calendar integration — automatically scheduling tasks into open time blocks based on estimated duration and user energy patterns
Social bouquets — optionally sharing your daily bouquet with friends or a study group for accountability