TaroT
Past, Present, Future, Rock & Roll.
TaroT is a mobile app that uses generative Ai to create detailed interpretations of Tarot card readings.
This app is currently in Beta.
2024 - Current.
TaroT is a mobile app that uses generative Ai to create detailed interpretations of Tarot card readings.
This app is currently in Beta.
2024 - Current.
1. I happen to like Tarot and I decided I was going to make my own Tarot App.
2. Existing Tarot apps are kitschy, poorly designed and cluttered with obnoxious ads.
3. Experience points.
The reason for this app is not monetization but simply a love of both Tarot and Tech.
The three best friends met at a round table and decided to create this thing together.
Taylor is a computer science wizard and he brought his experience as a Full Stack Engineer.
Daniel is aesthetic guru and he brought his experience as a UX/UI Designer.
Blue is a unicorn and they brought their experience as a UX Engineer.
And thus the fellowship was formed.
All Tarot card readings employ a spread, even if just a single card.
We chose to highlight the "Past, Present, Future" spread for its potential to tell a story and translate to a mobile experience.
It works like this, you draw three cards.
The first represents your Past, it tells you where you've been.
The second represents your Present, what is happening now.
The third represents a potential Future, what is yet to come.
Together they triangulate a narrative of self.
Tarot has more to do with Therapy Solitaire than it does Divination.
Through the act of reflection we can better see ourselves and make choices from that inference.
With a destination in mind now we needed directions, a roadmap on how to get there.
There is a surprising amount of work to do to take even a simple app from inception to deployment.
Even before beginning the work in earnest we needed to define what work needed to be done.
So we created this living list, which spread out into Trello boards, Slack channels, Git Hub repos and heaps of scrap paper with that weeks project timeline draw in pen at our round table.
TaroT App Needs to Provide.
1. Tarot card readings.
2. A Library of Tarot cards and their meanings.
3. An Archive of past readings.
After a good long sit at our round table to determine what the app did and did not need to accomplish, we drafted out a flow chart to visualize the architecture before designing and programing.
Iteration, Ideation, Incubation, Interpretation, Illustration, Investigation, Inquiry, Other I words.
Now began the question of How?
First sketches on printer paper at our round table, then wireframes in Figma.
Collectively we were asking,
How was this going to look?
How were these interactions going to play out?
How do these screens work and work together?
Elegant and Minimal.
Those are the keywords behind our design choices while gathering and creating artifacts.
Our style guide was Bauhaus, not Crystal Shop.
The Design and Development of Tarot are working concurrently, each informing the other.
I worked on Design with Daniel and Development with Taylor interchangeably.
High fidelity designs acted as a reference for development, and development determined what we needed designed. Before the App was in Beta we were able to use the High Fidelity Prototypes to conduct User Testing which in turn informed Development.
I don't view Design & Development as separate concerns but as an Ouroboros.
A snake biting its own tail.
This is why I straddle the line of the Designer & Developer as a UX Engineer.
I want to be hands on through the whole process.
The moving parts of TaroT are comprised of four components:
The Client ~ UI: This involves React Native, TypeScript, and APIs.
The Server ~ Back End: This includes SQL, TypeScript, and APIs.
The Database ~ Data Modeling: This uses Prisma to create SQL commands.
The AI ~ Chat GPT: This encompasses AI, Prompt Engineering, and APIs.
I worked primarily on the Front End, while Taylor focused mainly on the Back End. However, we were able to assist each other and collaboratively work through challenges across all areas.
Initially we conducted user tests with interactive prototypes designed in Figma.
Now we are performing tests with the Beta release using Apple Developer Test Flight sharing the App by invite only at this time.
The latest test results indicate that users are happy with the responses the Ai generates but that they actually want more features, more types of readings, the ability to create notes in relation to a particular reading, etc.
TaroT is currently in Beta, and working to release on the Apple Store.
A big part of setting out to do this was to take a product from inception to launch.
There is a surprising amount of work to do before publishing an App that has nothing to do with Development or Design.
With the bulk of the work behind us we hope to Deploy in the next few months pending approval from the Apple Store.
