User Interface
Adventure Stories is a project that I worked on in the peak of the ChatGPT media attention. It's an interface that allows a user to generate childrens' stories using ChatGPT, where the language model pauses every few sentences and asks the user what should happen next. It supplies some suggestions for where the story could go, allows the user to save and share stories, choose the name of the hero, and many other features. In the future it may also have AI generate images to go alongside the text, and I may release a mobile app version.
As with many Large Language Model projects, much of the difficulty is in prompt engineering in order to supply a consistent user experience. In this case, I want the model to be creative and flexible, but it's also very important to keep the content age appropriate for children. Less critical but also important for the user experience is to have the AI write at the correct level. Tuning the langugae and API parameters to result in a good product experience took many tries.
Additionally, this was the first time that I build a web app from scratch, by myself, handling the entire stack. There was a learning curve at the beginning picking up new prototyping tools. In building something from scratch, I also got to make my own tradeoffs in moving quickly and trying to get the product out the door, while also building in a way that was extensible and maintainable.
I built this project from scratch, including user research, application architecture, front end design, backend design, and implementation. Also the branding, marketing, customer support, etc.
LLMs and other generative AI technologies are better understood as enabling platforms as opposed to complete products. The output is too generic for most use cases. The mass market public does not want to invest the time in training themselves to elicit the best output from the models, and often there is additional ancillary functionality that can add polish and dimensionality to the user experience.
While a user could use ChatGPT with some creative prompting to recreate the functionality of Adventure Stories, abstracting away the prompt engineering and adding small features like automated prompt suggestions, the ability to save and share stories, or the ability to speak the prompt out loud, are all integral to a magical experience.
Adventure Stories Website Github Repo
