PLM alumnus bags Design Awards at RevenueCat Shipaton 2026

Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) alumnus Adrian Angelo Abelarde won the Design Award at the RevenueCat Shipaton 2026 held in New York City, Oct. 20. 

The RevenueCat Design Award recognizes applications that feature innovative interface, animation, and execution that support user experience.

Abelarde’s winning app, Clucky, is a rooster-themed alarm clock that challenges users to complete wake-up missions, including solving math problems, walking, doing physical activities, and completing memory challenges. Users can stack and customize the missions depending on their preferred difficulty. It also features alarm groups, an extra-loud mode, and personalized trackers.

“Clucky helps people who struggle to wake up by asking them to complete a mission,” Abelarde said.

Users can maintain a streak by completing these missions, represented in the app by a flaming balut, a Filipino delicacy made from a fertilized duck egg.

Abelarde drew inspiration for the app’s rooster theme from the bird’s crowing, a familiar sound for Filipinos. He incorporated the rooster into the interface to make the character central to the user experience.

According to RevenueCat’s blog, Clucky’s distinctive time picker stood out for its creative design. The rooster’s eyes serve as the time selector, while its beak functions as a pointer.

“The judges singled out the rooster’s eyes as a time picker and highlighted it as an example of the creativity in Clucky’s design,” Abelarde said.

RevenueCat described this year’s Shipaton as the world’s largest mobile app hackathon, featuring 3,985 project submissions, with nearly 3,000 apps set for release on the App Store, Google Play Store, and Galaxy Store.

Abelarde was among the 58 winners across 21 award categories, and his entry was one of the two winning apps built by Filipinos. 

He developed Clucky alongside Satya Dwivedi, who contributed to its design and marketing. The project also led to the development of a web app called Anim8, which helped create Clucky’s launch video.

Abelarde shared that the challenges he faced in developing the app were balancing its design and animations with its primary function as an alarm, as well as putting out the app in public.

Winning the RevenueCat Design Award also led to further recognition when Clucky was featured on a digital billboard in Times Square, New York City.

“Seeing Clucky in Times Square felt surreal. New York City has always felt like a place where dreams are made, and suddenly I was there, in the middle of it, seeing something we built on a billboard,” Abelarde said.

He encouraged PLM students interested in developing their own technology projects to begin creating even if they have yet to master all the skills involved.

“I didn’t wait until I knew everything. Every time you ship, you learn what works, what doesn’t, how people react, and how to make the next launch better,” he said.

“Some people might love what you make. Others might criticize it or even hate it. You can learn from that without letting it stop you. Keep improving, and you’ll figure out more along the way,” he added.

Abelarde is an alumnus of the College of Information Systems and Technology Management (CISTM), where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree in 2024.