Brokentooth.io / 06 Writing / A gift with doors
A gift with doors
Beginning a personal creative space without deciding everything its eventual owner should want.
The temptation in making a digital gift is to complete every detail: every room, every caption, every animation and every possible story.
That is also a good way to make something that belongs more to the builder than to the person receiving it.
Kiry's Playground starts as something I can make for her. The ambition is that it can later become something she can make things in.
Give it a first room, not a final floor plan
The first experience should have enough character to invite exploration. The long-term space should be open-ended: little rooms, games, music, places for writing, a corner that is allowed to be funny or strange, and places that can change with the person using them.
Not every room needs to be useful in a productivity sense. Some should simply be lovely places to visit.
That doesn't mean sacrificing real functionality. A room needs to open when you touch its object, a back button needs to bring you home, and a mobile screen should be comfortable to use with one thumb. If those parts are unreliable, the magic evaporates.
Public sketch, private future
The early Memoryhouse is publicly viewable and runs without an account. It contains no personal records or real family media. A later collaborative version will need actual user accounts and explicit permissions, especially if different people share selected spaces without sharing everything.
For now, this is the doorway, not the house deed.