Tatoey

Tatoey is an original concept I conceived, designed, and built: a personal entertainment OS for the streaming-fractured era, shaped around taste, memory, and the lost pleasure of browsing with intention.

The thesis is that discovery can feel more like walking through a favorite movie store: curated shelves, readable context, odd finds, personal playlists, and an assistant that understands what kind of night you are trying to have.

Audience

Primary One opinionated media user with fragmented watch history, personal playlists, and real taste context

Secondary Anyone looking for more personal, context-aware discovery across services and formats

My Role

Concept lead, UX/Product Designer, and Developer. I originated the idea, shaped product strategy, designed the natural-language discovery layer, and built the full stack

Stack

React, Vite, Claude API, Trakt, TMDB, Fanart.tv

Context

Self-initiated personal project. An exploration of how I would build an entertainment planner around my own habits, taste, memory, and curiosity

Challenge

The Problem

Streaming is fragmented. Discovery often lacks personal context. The feeling of browsing with taste has room to become more intentional again.

Content is scattered across many platforms with no unified identity
Recommendation engines rarely understand the nuance behind a person's repeat favorites, moods, and rituals
Watch history does not travel across services
Personal playlists and repeat favorites could play a larger role in shaping discovery

Objectives

Project Goals

Make natural language the primary discovery surface for mood, genre, format, and weird specificity
Use Trakt as the watch-history identity and TMDB/Fanart.tv as the metadata and visual spine
Favor calmer discovery patterns over autoplay pressure, endless scrolling, and one-size-fits-all rankings
Lay the groundwork for a broader entertainment planner that could eventually include games, live channels, and cross-format recommendations

In action

Feature Walkthroughs

Screens

Product Screens

Approach

Design Process

01 N=1 Strategy
- Defined single-person scope as a feature, not a limitation
- Removed social, trending, and median-user assumptions from the product model
02 Natural Language Discovery
- Made discovery start with prompts like "Something like Sicario but not as bleak"
- Used Claude to translate intent into result reasoning instead of opaque recommendation scores
03 Unified Data Layer
- Used Trakt for watch history identity, TMDB for metadata, and Fanart.tv for visual richness
- Designed the app as the aggregation layer none of those services build by themselves
04 Respectful Interaction Model
- Presented information cleanly without urgency, ranking anxiety, or autoplay pressure
- Measured interactions against whether they reduced cognitive load in the decision process

Results

Outcome & Reflection

Curation Revive the shelf-browsing feeling: readable context, strange finds, and consistent display.

Taste Let personal playlists, repeat favorites, and watch history shape what rises to the front.

Planner Point toward AI that can suggest a movie, a game, or an odd live channel for tonight's mood.

Tatoey is the product you build when you miss the feeling of choosing something from the shelf, guided by your own taste, memory, and curiosity.