itsdanni / momo

The Narrative Project

Purpose

• The purpose of this project is to re-create a personal narrative that clarifies and illuminates certain aspects one's life that may have been buried otherwise had it not been organized in a certain way
• By re-organizing one's life, one can see more clearly the relationships between certain things, understand oneself better, define more informed goals and prevent making past mistakes
• The project provides a centralized location for introspection and understanding of oneself

Proposed Sections

• The proposed sections are usually aspects of one's life that are not emphasized in social media, or aspects that are scattered around on the internet, but are influential in building the way we are today
• Currently, such sections include diaries, opinions, accounts of days, books read, movies watched, music, short blurbs, and other sections that may be added later that could help in strengthening the purpose

Organization

• Sections are not disjoint, as the purpose of providing a space to see these aspects of life together is to establish connections between different sections. Therefore, individual accounts will have links to other accounts, and visualizations of statistics are proposed to better illustrate these connections
• mental models for visualizing this project may be thought of as a multimedia personal diary and dashboard for past accounts

Data Storage

• currently, the author has not decided whether to source data on third party websites or store it locally on the server. Considerations that influence this decision include performance speed, ease of access, and storage space
• Since the site right now would not be connected to others (not a social network)

Source

• Data for books and movies will come from GoodReads, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes. It will be linked to any thoughts or related information the author had when reading or watching these things.
• Data for personal diaries source is not clear at the moment. Since the author has personal accounts stored in multiple places (which is part of the reason a centralized location is desired), author may need to retrieve older accounts from various blogging sites, diaries and note taking apps. This will take some time figuring out.
• Another complication includes personal photos. Decisions on what kind of photos to put on the site need to be made. Currently, the author is deciding between all personal photos or ones that are aesthetically pleasing (made for an art project or taken with an audience in mind)
• The pros and cons of these two kinds of images would of course, be concerns on creating too much noise and wasting storage space, making the space ugly. The concern for the other would be that it may not reflect fully one's life.

Construction plan

• A full stack approach is considered. Rather than building out the entire backend or frontend first, the author will focus on features to implement.
• For more concrete details on project development, see the Dev Diary.