Moolight App

Oran: "I've been journaling for years, but it feels like all the content just sits there, and I can't really reflect on it. Why not keep it simple? Install a button on my wall, and I'll press it daily to show my mood."

Legolas: "Sure thing! I can do that." He then found three pedometers in red, yellow, and green, thinking gleefully, "This way, not only can she track her mood, but she can also see how often she felt a certain way."

Oran: "Wow, that's neat! But how would I know which day I recorded my mood?"

Legolas, falling silent: "… The pedometers won't be able to do that. Maybe we should develop an app instead."

One afternoon at the end of May 2022, this conversation took place between Oran and me. Two introverts, an INFP and an INFJ, both of us have a profound love for journaling.

Coincidentally, I'm the author of "The iOS Development Guide for Creators." I spent 8.5 years in Vancouver during my undergraduate years, exploring out of sheer interest and have a cross-disciplinary background in computer science and design. Oran, on the other hand, is a graduate student majoring in Data Science at Tsinghua University. While she has never been exposed to iOS development, she has a genuine passion for extracting valuable insights from data.

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A Systematic Methodology

Many might wonder, is a seemingly systematic approach viable? While the logic is clear to most, true understanding comes from practice. So, we began to implement the methodologies from the tutorials. We first created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and conducted user research.

Around June or July of 2022, we were engaged in the above activities. We discussed the idea with over 100 individuals and found that a significant portion was interested in this concept. Thus, we decided to give the green light to the Moolight project and officially move forward. During this time, Moolight also partnered with like-minded individuals from the fields of art, psychology, and others, strategizing together.

During this period, Oran self-learned iOS development and began implementing the desired features for Moolight.

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Pain Points and Design Concept

You might wonder, with so many recording products on the market, why create Moolight? This was, in fact, the first question we faced. We explored for quite a while, and despite the multitude of products out there, we didn't find one that suited our needs. Through user research, we noticed this issue as well. People's journaling habits varied greatly, but many consistently defaulted back to their device's built-in memo or note apps.

The problem with many journaling or mood-tracking apps is their complexity. They might begin by asking a series of questions such as time, weather, location, mood, source of the emotion, etc. Using them feels like filling out a survey. Traditional note-taking apps, on the other hand, usually sort entries by the last edited date, making it easy to jumble up the order when reviewing notes.

Most crucially, a product that can provide analysis from past records simply doesn't exist at this moment. This brings us back to the issue Oran mentioned at the beginning of the article: after recording so much, why let these words gather dust?

With this in mind, we started conceptualizing Moolight, determining what it truly should be.

Pain Point 1: Ample records, but difficult to review.
Pain Point 2: All-knowing AI understands the world, but not me.
Pain Point 3: Discouraged by tedious tags even before starting a diary entry.
Pain Point 4: Uniform products everywhere; where's the unique soul?
List goes on and on….

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Rethinking Journaling

Moolight is a product designed from scratch with original thought. Our contemplation began with our understanding of time. From a realistic perspective, life can be imagined as a timeline where we are always in the present. This might be the temporal interpretation of the common phrase "living in the moment."

So, what's history? And what is the future? History might be all past memories and experiences, while the future holds our hopes, aspirations, and fantasies. We can, in fact, seek patterns from history, detect changes in our moods and focuses, and thereby gain insights for our future selves.

Moolight is comprised of three pages: Today, Gallery, and Insights. They respectively focus on the present, the past, and the future time dimensions.
Moolight is dedicated to creating your own little world - a world that's uniquely yours, constantly grounded in the present, reflecting on the past, and looking forward to the future.

Life consists of countless discontinuous moments. In each moment, you experience distinct emotions and thoughts - like the joy of seeing delicious food, interacting with colleagues, or being on a trip. To prevent past moments from influencing the present, every time you open Moolight, you are greeted by a blank slate, ready for you to effortlessly jot down your thoughts. Ideas are fleeting and precious, and we're easily distracted. Moolight aims to minimize the loss of these thoughts.

Entry-based recording is the norm: one entry, one image, per moment. With this structure, you can quickly log a particular instant. Within the Gallery, AI will automatically generate daily headlines for you, aiding in swiftly navigating to a specific memory. Based on historical analysis, the "Insights" page provides a richer, multidimensional perspective, aiming to inspire future-oriented thinking.

Our personal information is a critical aspect of our privacy. How can we protect it while also catering to individualized needs and providing feedback? We've designed a triad of AI systems: "Local AI, Personalized AI, and Large Language AI" to empower Moolight with intelligence, forming its cognitive ability and AI framework.