Komojee

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  aiueo chart

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  App Icon

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  screenshot: export artwork

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  screenshot: hiragana chart

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  screenshot: typewriter

Inspiration

My child has started learning to write. I wanted to capture those unique quirks of their handwriting that exist only at this stage of their life.

I have a five-year-old child. Over the past year, they have gone from being unable to write to mastering most of the hiragana (Japanese syllabary) characters. While it is far from perfect—with occasional left-right reversals or unbalanced shapes—watching them gain skills they previously lacked allows me to witness and appreciate their growth.

As a parent, I wanted to document this developmental stage—something visible only right now—so I could look back on it fondly in the future. I imagined other parents might feel the same way, which is what inspired me to create this app.

What it does

You can create a "Hiragana chart" using your child's actual handwriting. You can also create custom message images using their handwriting.

By saving the "Hiragana chart" as an image, you can display it in your home or include it in a photo album. Since you can create custom message images, you can also send messages to family members or grandparents living far away.

I hope you take a look at the process shown in the video where characters selected from photos are converted into digital data. We are aiming for the Design, Peace, #BIP, and One Signal awards.

How we built it

I wrote about some of the details in a blog post: Introducing "Komojee": An app to digitally preserve and utilize your child's handwriting | 00b4f5

Privacy

All imported images are processed on-device, so there are no privacy concerns. Imported characters are stored internally in vector format. Because they are vectors, they print beautifully as PDFs; you can even enlarge and print them on large paper for framing.

Character Import

While the input image requires certain conditions, the app reduces the user's workload by automatically pre-selecting areas likely to contain characters. We aim for high-quality printing by processing input images—converting them to grayscale, classifying them by density, and smoothing outlines into vector paths. Even after processing the input image, some noise may remain; however, the app identifies potential noise based on size and automatically selects these items when the noise removal UI opens. You can easily add items to or remove them from the noise list using touch and swipe gestures.

Hiragana Chart

You can save the completed Hiragana chart as a beautifully laid-out image, designed to look great when displayed in a room. When saving the image, colors are applied randomly to each character, selected from your chosen theme. Color options range from playful, child-like crayon and pastel tones to more sophisticated, muted, or mid-century modern palettes suitable for adult living spaces.

Typewriter

You can create custom message images using the characters you’ve captured. Turn things your child might say into message images—perfect for sending as greetings to distant relatives like grandparents.

Challenges we ran into

As mentioned above, capturing the characters cleanly was a significant challenge. However, because we had already established a path toward achieving a workable level of accuracy before the "Ship-a-thon" period began, we were able to successfully submit the app to the App Store within that timeframe.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We succeeded in creating a way to preserve a child's unique handwriting—something that is only possible while they are young. While the app might appear simple due to its limited feature set, we believe the smooth, intuitive user experience masks the complex processing happening under the hood. We are also proud that all this processing takes place entirely on the device itself, without relying on a server.

What we learned

During development, we refined our color palettes to balance a child-like feel with sophisticated tones that adults would appreciate for home decor. Although we had many ideas for additional features, we deliberately kept the feature set minimal to focus on perfecting existing functions and enhancing the overall UI/UX.

What's next for Komojee

Improving the layout and polish of the Hiragana chart, and enhancing the presentation and methods for sharing.

Built With

• cursor
• onesignal
• revenuecat
• swift
• telemetrydeck
• visionframework