7월 17일 금요일
7월 17일 금요일
7월 17일 금요일
7월 17일 금요일
In the first Xplored work log, I organized the story around one question: “How far can I build with AI?” It covered moving Figma tokens into code, building React components, automating content entry, and connecting the whole thing to deployment. This time, the question changed a little.
“What would Xplored need in order to become a service people actually use, come back to, and leave their own work in?”
The first version of Xplored was closer to a resource curation site for designers. It collected good tools, references, and insights, then explained where each one could be useful. But as I kept building, one thing started to feel missing.
It would be more interesting if the experience did not stop at showing resources,
but continued all the way to the actual results people made with those resources.
So this time, I am building Works inside Xplored.
The first thing I tried was “project upload.”
At first, I thought about it simply. Would title, image, and description be enough? But once I tried uploading something myself, it felt insufficient. Design work rarely ends with a single image.
So Works is changing to support this kind of information:
Rather than a simple portfolio card, it is closer to a small case study. I am building it so people can leave behind not just “I made this image,” but what they used, what they intended, and what kind of result came out of it.
The second area I touched the most was the upload editor.
At first, it was just a normal input field for writing a description. But to write a proper work log, paragraphs, lists, links, and images needed to mix naturally. So I added a lightweight body editor that feels a bit like Notion.
Now you can type / to add blocks, use parts of Markdown, and place images in the middle of the body. While building it, I kept fixing small details too.
Cursor spacing, arrow-key movement, keyboard control in the slash menu, paragraph spacing, and things like that.
These look small on a feature list, but you feel them right away when you actually write. There is a surprisingly large gap between “it works” and “I want to keep using it.”
The most important part of this round was connecting the resources used.
The core of Xplored is ultimately “resources worth using for designers,” but if those resources never connect to actual work, they remain just a list.
So I added a Made with area to the Work detail page. For example, if a project used Figma, Midjourney, Framer, and Claude Code, those resources appear under the work.
At first, it only showed the text the user typed. Now, when a name matches a resource registered in Xplored, it connects automatically. It gets an icon too, and clicking it takes you to the resource detail page.
In the other direction, resource detail pages can now show “Works made with this resource.”
This is a meaningful change for Xplored.
Resources are no longer standalone information. They are connected to real outcomes.
Works was not the only thing I built. I am also continuing to refine the existing resources and insights.
Recently, I have been changing resource detail pages so related articles, similar resources, and Works that used the resource appear together. Before, the flow ended at “this tool is good.” Now I want to make this kind of loop:
I wanted Xplored to become more than a collection of bookmarks. I wanted it to have a flow from discovery to understanding to making to sharing.
To make it feel like a real service, I also needed the less visible parts.
So recently I organized the Korean and English content structure, then adjusted the sitemap and metadata for multiple languages. I also added onboarding so signed-in users can create a nickname and have their own profile and Works.
The home page changed a little too. Before, it was closer to a resource-centered list. Now I am turning it into a feed-style home that shows insights, tools, and Works together. I am also experimenting with adjusting insight priority based on the interest sources users choose.
It is not complete yet, but the direction is much clearer now.
Xplored is moving from “a place to find good AI/design resources” toward “a place where you can also see what people made with those resources.”
What I felt during this round is that a product does not become better because of one big feature alone.
Image upload needs to be a little more stable, the editor cursor should not jump strangely, resource names need to connect well, author profiles need to appear naturally, and empty states should not feel awkward.
When these small things accumulate, the product starts to feel like an actual service.
I am still using AI coding tools a lot. But compared with before, the roles are more clearly divided.
AI helps me build faster,
and I keep shaping the product feel.
What to show, what to hide, which flow feels natural, how much to automate, and where a person should still make the judgment. Those are still things a person needs to keep watching.
Finally, Xplored is still small and still changing.
It started as “resource curation for designers,” but now I want it to go a little further. I hope it becomes a space that does not stop at introducing good tools, but also shows what people can actually make with those tools.
That is it for the second Xplored work log.
Next time, I will write more concretely about how the projects uploaded to Works connect with resources.
