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Tâi Days
A Daily Piece of Taiwan,
Shaped with AI

A nostalgic Taiwanese calendar widget that brings Tâi-gí back into everyday life, one word and one sentence at a time.

Tâi Days combines seasonal Taiwanese themes, official word audio, and a lightweight content system. I used AI to accelerate content creation, visual design, and prototyping while keeping the final product shaped by human judgment and cultural taste.

MY ROLE

Product Builder

DELIVERABLES

Visual Design System
React Prototype
Content Management System
Design Documentation for AI
GitHub Repository
Audio Integration

DURATION

June 2025 (2 weeks)

CONTEXT

A Language I Grew Up Around,
But Didn’t Fully Inherit

Tâi-gí, also known as Taiwanese Hokkien, was once widely spoken in everyday life across Taiwan. For many in my generation, however, it has become less present in daily use. It still carries family memories, local humor, markets, songs, and everyday expressions, but it can feel close without being fully familiar.

「台語猶原佇咱的日常內底。」
Taiwanese still lives within our everyday life.

Tâi Days started from that gap: a small daily ritual that gently brings Tâi-gí back into everyday life, one word, one sentence, and one cultural moment at a time.

WORKFLOW

AI Helped Me Move Faster Without Losing the Feeling of the Product

I used AI across the process to move from exploration to a working MVP. The workflow below highlights what I produced at each step, from early directions and design principles to the content system, React prototype, and GitHub documentation.

Scoping Down to Ship Well

However, the MVP needed to feel both culturally specific and feasible to build. I focused on two key decisions: choosing a familiar Taiwanese calendar format as the product metaphor, and grounding the language content in trusted pronunciation sources.

Calendar as Cultural Object
Constraint

A typical learning app treats Tâi-gí as a subject to be studied from scratch. But for my generation, it is already around us. The format needed to carry that closeness.

Decision

I chose a tear-off calendar inspired by Taiwanese fruit calendars, so the product feels like rediscovering a familiar daily. With one word a day, no levels, and no streaks, the experience stays intentionally small.

Official Audio as Trusted Source
Constraint

I first prototyped audio with Google TTS, but it did not fully support Tâi-gí pronunciation. Since unreliable audio could teach the wrong sound, I chose not to rely on generated pronunciation for the MVP.

Decision

I switched to the Ministry of Education dictionary’s native-speaker recordings and accepted the constraint that not every word would have audio. Therefore, I rebuilt the vocabulary around entries with verified recordings.

OUTCOME

One Word, One Sentence, One Small Daily Moment

A working prototype with tear-off interaction, word audio, and daily Taiwanese content. Feel free to try it below, or explore the project on GitHub if you’d like to run it locally. The current MVP includes content through September.

Daily Language
in Context

Each day introduces one Tâi-gí word, a short explanation, and an example sentence. Vocabulary is selected around lunar festivals, seasonal moments, and everyday Taiwanese life, so each word feels contextual.

Seasonal
Visual Ritual

Inspired by Taiwanese fruit calendars, each month uses seasonal produce as the visual theme and pairs it with a tear-off interaction to create a small daily ritual.

Reliable Word Audio

Each calendar entry includes playable word pronunciation, helping users connect the written word, Tailo, and spoken sound.

Take away
Reflection
AI Can Speed Up Exploration,
But Craft Still Needs Human Control

This project helped me learn how to integrate AI into my design workflow across content, visual exploration, and prototyping. AI was helpful for moving faster and expanding directions, but personally, I think that the final craft still required hands-on design judgment. For detailed visual refinement and layout quality, Figma remained the more reliable space for making precise decisions.

Next Level
Testing Demand Before Investing in TTS

Authentic Tâi-gí TTS is still limited and often requires paid services, so I would first validate user demand before investing in sentence-level audio. If audio proves valuable, the next step would be to explore a reliable, scalable way to support full-sentence pronunciation.