62 karma · joined October 27, 2021
https://twitter.com/gaelgthomas
I just pushed an update to remove the "Show more" button.
And you put the finger on something right here. As you describe, I didn't see it as: "If I'm sad, I want to listen to sad music".
When I built the app, I was really into that mindset of "How can this book help me when I'm in that mood?" (e.g., I'm feeling tired -> Suggesting "Why We Sleep" to fix your sleep and understand why sleeping is essential).
Somehow, I'm happy because what I wanted to do becomes clear when you use the website (based on what you described, which is 100% correct). But that also means I could have worked my "marketing/copies" differently to reflect that more.
If you want to see the detailed answer, I did it in another question below. Feel free to have a look at it!
TLDR: Curations are made with AI using custom prompts and then double-checked + added manually. The main idea behind that was to ensure the quality of the curated content. IMO, for this type of project, having less choice if the curation is good is fine, rather than having something via an API with "inconsistent" data and less relevance.
That's an interesting question; this was a small challenge for some reasons.
1. Since this is my first project, I wanted to ship something clean but fast (scope down to one feature).
2. I initially wanted to use some APIs. TLDR: Goodreads closed its API on December 8th, 2020. OpenLibrary was not bad, but the data required to be more consistent. Google Books API was alright, but I would have also curated manually in the end, and sometimes some info could have been better. Maybe it's a personal feeling, but it's hard to have a good books API out there (probably due to Amazon owning Goodreads and making sure it's hard for competitors to have good data as they do).
3. I knew it'd be complex to satisfy everyone with the recommendations, but I can do my best. My best is to ensure that what is recommended is included, even if it's a small amount, and that the recommendation is well rated by the community (e.g., on Goodreads).
4. Then, I realized (again) that we're in the age of AI, and I could leverage that (at least for a 1st release and see how it goes). Based on that, I tried different prompts with many criteria until I found one I liked. By doing this, I could ensure the quality of what was curated.
If it evolves in the future, this will definitely need improvement. But, for a first release, it does the trick!
I hope it answers your question!
If I have to be honest, I started with this project to prove to myself that I can build something, ship it, and market it (bring traffic to it). This idea crossed my mind, but I didn't do it because I didn't expect I would have had enough traffic to make it potentially worth it!!
Lesson learned for next time (or next update):
- be more ambitious
- do not doubt yourself and the internet's magic
Your comment is gold!
I will bookmark it and refer to it for my future projects. It's good to have feedback on the design so I can improve it next time.
By any chance, do you have any design resources or books you would recommend for something getting started with that (ideally actionable)?
That may be unclear, and I may have to update the small banner on the homepage. As mentioned, it's "an average of 4.09/5 on Goodreads". The calculation works as follows: sum of all unique books rating / number of books = average.
I wanted to highlight that the website has books rated below 4/5 and above 4/5, but overall, the average rating on Goodreads is relatively high (= books recommended by the community).
Is there anything I can improve to make it more clear? :)
It's definitely something to add. Do you have other mood suggestions in mind?