forum New Feature: Smart Suggestions (beta)

Started June 09, 2018 by @andrew health_and_safety flash_onAdmin

tune

Hey all, I just turned on a new beta feature for everyone called Smart Suggestions. It's only turned on for characters right now so I can get some initial feedback, but will be coming to all page types soon. This feature is for everyone, whether you have a premium subscription or not.

Here's how it works: you'll now see a little lightning icon on some fields while you're creating Notebook.ai pages. That icon simply means that smart suggestions are enabled for that field. You're free to go about using Notebook.ai exactly as you were before, however you'll now occasionally see some suggestions based on whatever you're typing. For example, clicking into a character's motivation field and typing 'H' might suggest "Happiness", "Honor", or "Friendship" (because there's an h there!) for a motivation.

It's a great way to effectively "browse" through options for each field, especially when you're not sure what feels quite right yet as an answer. Now you can see a few answers and decide for yourself whether they fit the idea you're building, or you can type something of your own like you always could and go on your own path!

I also think it might be nice to shave off a second or two of typing out the ideas in your head; when you can type a few characters and click what you're already thinking, you're free to keep that image in your head longer. I hope this feature helps as we all build the worlds in our heads.

Some notes on the beta:

• The number of suggestions are somewhat limited right now as I build out the feature, and will be expanded once all page types are enabled.

• Not all fields support suggestions, for example a character's name and background information.

Any feedback is much appreciated. I'm super happy to share this feature with everyone! More improvements to the fields (reordering, editing, deleting non-custom fields, etc) are also coming soon. :)

I really like this feature, especially cause I only just started using this site. It's really helpful and convenient. The only issue I've come across is not being able to pick more than one suggestion. Once I pick one, it doesn't show the suggestions anymore.

This is an amazing improvement! I'm really happy with it, but I definitely agree with Lexisicle about not being able to choose more than one.

Huh, I hadn't thought at all about selecting multiple options; I just assumed people would pick one and if they saw others, they'd type that in after. I can definitely make multiple options possible though – you'd probably type a little bit (to get to the autocomplete) and select a few there, and then erase that to type something different to select from, and so on. Is that how you see it working? There's so many options available (and growing) that it might not make sense to show them all at once, which is why we're limiting to just autocompleting what you might be typing already, but maybe I could work in some way to expose the whole list somehow also.

A brief update on this beta: since we just moved over to a new fields system, suggestions are temporarily disabled until it can be rewritten with the new system in mind. I plan on re-enabling it and expanding to a second type of page soon.

Another update: many fields have been re-enabled, and are now based on the field label and work on any type of page. So, for example, the "Eye color" suggestions will occur on the default "Eye color" field on characters, but also on any other page type you add an "Eye color" field to.

I'll be adding this functionality to more and more fields going forward, and will get a list up somewhere of the fields they trigger on soon (so you can add your own fields if you want them)! :)