Week 11 - Documentation Website & Bedtime Reminder Update
Migrating MiniKin to the Browser
As of now, MiniKin is not available for download. I wanted an accessible way for users to interact with it before then. That was when I decided to make MiniKin interactable within a browser page. This page would also serve as its documentation website.
The browser version can be found here:
Because MiniKin is an Electron application and therefore built using web technologies (i.e HTML, CSS, JS), its core interaction logic was reusable in the browser environment, subject to a few modifications.
Project Structure
Since this version of MiniKin would be in a browser environment, any files / logic related to Electron are not included in this version.
These include:
Removing preload.js (this is Electron-specific)
Removing click-through logic (since MiniKin is no longer on the desktop)
Lottie Loading
When working on MiniKin with the Electron framework, Lottie animations were loaded from my local computer. To make these animations accessible via a browser, I used a CDN (Content Delivery Network) instead.
Electron
Lottie animations were loaded from the local node_modules folder
<script src="../node_modules/lottie-web/build/player/lottie.min.js"></script>
Browser
Lottie animations were loaded via a CDN
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lottie-web/5.12.2/lottie.min.js"></script>
Updating MiniKin’s Bedtime Reminder Mode
During the design research interview sessions, participants expressed confusion on MiniKin’s bedtime reminder, in which it was still wearing a raincoat when it was deploying the reminder, and that they think the reminder would be better communicated if he was in pyjamas, an outfit that is associated with sleep.
I proceed to sketch out how MiniKin would look in pyjamas, coming up with two versions as shown above. Eventually, I settled for V02 as it looks more like a night gown than V01. The colors were also darkened with a higher contrast for visual accessibility.
Moving forward, I will attempt to add this mode into MiniKin’s current code such that it would override the weather mode between 11.30pm and 7am.
