LotusLog

The system journaling app created by @cambriancrew

[lotuslog]

It's been quite awhile since we worked on our 101 Journal Prompts for Plural Systems book. Last time we did, we were in the 60s on number of prompts, and were working on organizing them into categories.

Today we decided to work on it again only to find, to our IMMENSE frustration, that we can't find the original 60+ prompts file. It may be one of the hundred+ "unnamed document" files we have in our Google Drive (or one of our several Google Drive accounts >.>), or one of the I don't even wanna KNOW how many unnamed documents on our desktop. It's definitely not on our laptop at least, we've kept that pretty clean!

We did find the organized file, with a clear title... but only 12 prompts in it in one category.

So we started again, going category by category this time, and now are up to #50! Halfway done. :)

This would be so much easier if we were counting individual questions as most of these prompts have 3-5 questions. T.T When it's done we'll be looking for 1-2 beta readers to read and help with making sure the language and prompts are as inclusive as possible and nonrepetitive, and that the glossary we include is accessible and helpful. We should have it done by the end of the week. (It's a nice break from studying and working on LotusLog! Which we are doing too, but a little less.)

[lotuslog]

Someone asked in the comments and I realized that I didn't make it clear why this was posted to this blog - these prompts will be collected into an ebook, and also will be a free part of LotusLog's prompt feature! :)

[lotuslog]

I'm curious, will there be a way to mark a fronter as the "main fronter?" The best comparison I can point to is Octocon, since it considered main fronter an entirely different type of fronting from other fronts. That could be a way to avoid the "extremely long list of members on the welcome page" issue. If you can select a main fronter, I'd use that - otherwise, I'd likely just use the 'collective' name.

(Please delete or repost just the text if this goes through off anon!)

That's a pretty good solution! I didn't think of that, but it makes perfect sense. I really appreciate it!

[lotuslog]

I've run into an interesting UX question: How would you like the app to greet you?

Here's what the home screen currently looks like:

But I'm also working today on the system display and organization page. I was initially thinking that this page would have your collective name at the top, the same as the greeting. But what if you want the main page to greet you individually? What if you don't have a system name? So I'm working on the personalization aspect of the settings page. It'll have an area for a system name. But I want to give options for the greeting: System name, current fronter name, and custom name. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle co-fronting situations though. I will need to have some kind of numerical limit to names for the greeting or it could end up being much too long and pushing the buttons too far down. And then of course you can leave the greeting name empty and it'll just say Welcome!

Which option would you go for?

What would you set the greeting to?

Empty

System/collective name

Current fronters

Custom name

results

Voting ended onMay 26

[lotuslog]

It's such a small little thing, being able to save your name for the greeting here, but it gave me such a headache over something so small. I had typed in one crucial spot settngs instead of settings. Discovering and fixing the error was really satisfying though! It's almost poetic, that the cause of an issue with setting your system name was a missing "i". Because it's not I, it's us~! Now on to bigger and better things where I'll almost certainly have a handful of similar tiny errors: The view system page. Hopefully I don't end up wanting to tear our hair out after this.

[lotuslog]

Just a tiny little update. We got localStorage set up and working so you can now set a name for the app to greet you with and it'll remember that, and this is also the foundational basis behind front tracking and journal entries. This upcoming week we're going to work on being able to add systemmates and set up categories, starting with our own structure: originals, Crew, Passengers. We're going to try and make it a kind of system where you can have more than one method of organizing your system — by date they joined, by origin, by subsystem etc — but that'll take quite a bit of effort to put together. I'm looking forward to the challenge. And then of course, the real fun is making it look good!

[lotuslog]

It's been quite awhile since we worked on our 101 Journal Prompts for Plural Systems book. Last time we did, we were in the 60s on number of prompts, and were working on organizing them into categories.

Today we decided to work on it again only to find, to our IMMENSE frustration, that we can't find the original 60+ prompts file. It may be one of the hundred+ "unnamed document" files we have in our Google Drive (or one of our several Google Drive accounts >.>), or one of the I don't even wanna KNOW how many unnamed documents on our desktop. It's definitely not on our laptop at least, we've kept that pretty clean!

We did find the organized file, with a clear title... but only 12 prompts in it in one category.

So we started again, going category by category this time, and now are up to #50! Halfway done. :)

This would be so much easier if we were counting individual questions as most of these prompts have 3-5 questions. T.T When it's done we'll be looking for 1-2 beta readers to read and help with making sure the language and prompts are as inclusive as possible and nonrepetitive, and that the glossary we include is accessible and helpful. We should have it done by the end of the week. (It's a nice break from studying and working on LotusLog! Which we are doing too, but a little less.)

[lotuslog]

Getting started on some basic programming tonight, this is what we're starting with. Not a lot LOL.

[lotuslog]

Small progress - I basically forgot everything I knew about flex-box (a module for layout and aligning items on a page) and so this took a bit.  😅 Next task: image editing on the paper texture so it'll tile properly!

[cambriancrew]

Done but back cramps :/ so off to bed for a brief nap. Next task will be to put the buttons in and the quicklog text+pfp box. Then comes building the settings page. :)

Edit: woops this was meant to be posted on the LotusLog blog. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[lotuslog]

Home screen done (can't see the cursor but it's over the New Journal Entry button) now on to the Settings page. First though, code all the themes!

[lotuslog]

Themes are implemented, Settings page looks good, added a View Journal button to the homepage, found a paper texture that I like better, and spent way too much time bug fixing! But that's part of the learning process. :)

[lotuslog]

Getting started on some basic programming tonight, this is what we're starting with. Not a lot LOL.

[lotuslog]

Small progress - I basically forgot everything I knew about flex-box (a module for layout and aligning items on a page) and so this took a bit.  😅 Next task: image editing on the paper texture so it'll tile properly!

[cambriancrew]

Done but back cramps :/ so off to bed for a brief nap. Next task will be to put the buttons in and the quicklog text+pfp box. Then comes building the settings page. :)

Edit: woops this was meant to be posted on the LotusLog blog. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[lotuslog]

Home screen done (can't see the cursor but it's over the New Journal Entry button) now on to the Settings page. First though, code all the themes!

[lotuslog]

Getting started on some basic programming tonight, this is what we're starting with. Not a lot LOL.

[lotuslog]

Small progress - I basically forgot everything I knew about flex-box (a module for layout and aligning items on a page) and so this took a bit.  😅 Next task: image editing on the paper texture so it'll tile properly!

[lotuslog]

Getting started on some basic programming tonight, this is what we're starting with. Not a lot LOL.

[lotuslog]

I'm going to be working on coding up some very basic screens tonight :) Just the home screen and theme settings and home page buttons and figuring out how to make it so you can customize how it greets you. Lots of localStorage work that I'm excited to dig into.

And then like. Lots of foundational stuff: getting all the different pages into files and such. I'll post screenshots and such as I go, as I know a few of y'all are enjoying watching the process unfold.

Tonight's work is exclusively going to be working with mobile screen sizes. I'll wireframe up some ideas for a desktop version another day, probably later this week.

[lotuslog]

I want to make sure everyone is 100% clear on this:

There will be zero AI in the programming of LotusLog (LL).

The platform we're using to study, Codecademy, does have AI that does code assessments on independent projects. We've used it before, but now that we've figured out we can skip that we're not using that going forward.

That is the closest anything AI related is coming to LotusLog.

Learning to code every piece myself and do all the debugging and testing myself is an important part of the process. This does mean LL is going to take longer to be released than other apps partially or fully created with AI. (And also slower than from people who already know how to do all this.) But that part is important to us because we're using this for our IRL portfolio for getting a job. We need to be fully prepared to explain every part of the process, every piece of the code, every design choice.

Yes, we're also aware that AI is pervasive in the programming and design industries. If we get a job where AI use is expected or mandated we'll use it there. Just not ever with LL.

[lotuslog]

Took a break from studying this morning to play with theme ideas. Nothing fancy, but I love customization :)

[lotuslog]

✨~app icon created~ ✨ Back to studying so I can actually make this thing.

[lotuslog]

Some very basic, very unfinished, wireframes for Lotus Log :) Ignore the colors, that's just so that I'm not blinded by stark white backgrounds lol. Going to do several other screens too but we want to do that at the coffee shop and we're waiting for a new laptop charger to be delivered soon because we turned our house upside down looking for it and can't find it >.< but we focus better at the coffee shop because we're less tempted to check games and Tumblr etc lol Is there anything else I should put on the home page? Also the color on the fifth entry on the Journal History page is intended to indicate author at a glance. You won't have to include an author on each entry, but if you do you'll be able to easily see it in history there. If there's more than one author on an entry, that'll be listed in the full view, but only the primary author will be seen on this screen. (At least that's the plan for now, we'll see with user testing if a different method works better.)

[lotuslog]

This is turning out really cool ^_^ What do y'all think, with or without the paper texture? (Picrew source: Maddel_art)

With or without the paper texture? (Colors will be changeable with themes)

With the texture

Without the texture

Both. Both is good.

Something else?

Voting ended onMar 31

[lotuslog]

Couple more wireframes, again nothing super fancy

[lotuslog]

Some very basic, very unfinished, wireframes for Lotus Log :) Ignore the colors, that's just so that I'm not blinded by stark white backgrounds lol. Going to do several other screens too but we want to do that at the coffee shop and we're waiting for a new laptop charger to be delivered soon because we turned our house upside down looking for it and can't find it >.< but we focus better at the coffee shop because we're less tempted to check games and Tumblr etc lol Is there anything else I should put on the home page? Also the color on the fifth entry on the Journal History page is intended to indicate author at a glance. You won't have to include an author on each entry, but if you do you'll be able to easily see it in history there. If there's more than one author on an entry, that'll be listed in the full view, but only the primary author will be seen on this screen. (At least that's the plan for now, we'll see with user testing if a different method works better.)