CREATIVE NOTES / CODING & PLAYFUL LEARNING
Look First, Collect Later: Seeing, Owning and Liking in a Card Album
Must you draw a card before you can like it? The portfolio of Hong Kong primary pupil Zhan Yining, also known as Monica, now includes the virtual album Monica’s Play. This editorial observation uses its current interface and code to examine three small buttons: how programming records what you can see, what you have drawn and what you like. The album uses AI-generated fan illustrations of existing characters and is an unofficial virtual project. This note does not attribute the illustrations or undocumented development work to Monica personally.
Three buttons answer three different questions
All cards answers: which designs exist here? The current album has twenty-four designs, and their fronts and backs can be explored before any are drawn. My collection answers: which designs have a recorded draw? Favourites answers: which have I marked as liked? Think of a bookshop catalogue, a shelf at home and a wish list. They serve different purposes and need not share one drawer.
A heart is not a collection receipt
When browser storage is working, an undrawn card can still become a favourite. Turning on its heart changes the liked list without adding a collected copy; removing the heart does not subtract a copy already drawn. Suppose a design starts with zero copies. Marking it as a favourite leaves that count at zero. The displayed count can rise when the card is drawn or when a valid backup contains more existing copies; marking the heart itself adds no copies. Ownership and liking are independent records, not one shared switch.
A missing card may simply be filtered out
Each view can also be narrowed by type, scene and search text. Selecting Favourites and then the Space scene shows cards that are both liked and set in space. Other favourites have merely failed the current filter; they have not been deleted. An empty My collection view does not mean the artwork is locked. Clear the search or return to all scenes before judging the records. That explains an empty view more usefully than drawing another pack.
Pausing draws does not close the album
The current rules allow up to five packs a day and pause new draws after six hundred seconds of accumulated foreground activity. Whichever limit is reached first blocks another draw. The album remains viewable, so a disabled draw button and unavailable artwork are different states. The implementation treats these functions separately: generating a new random result has conditions, while viewing existing designs need not pass that gate. Reminders use this device’s date and browser records; they are not enforced across devices.
Try it on paper, then ask where the record lives
For a paper activity, draw two small cards with columns for Copies drawn and Favourite: yes or no. Give the first zero copies and a yes, then the second one copy and a no. Circle the cards that belong in My collection and in Favourites. The lists differ, and you can predict the interface without drawing a pack. This is a suggested reader activity, not a test Monica is documented as having completed.
On the website, the collection and favourites stay in the current browser. Changing between Chinese and English preserves them, but another browser does not receive them automatically. Exporting produces a backup file rather than uploading to a cloud account. Importing keeps the higher existing count for each design and combines favourite lists; importing two identical backups does not add their counts as new cards. Clear state names, together with a clear storage location, make the next action easier to predict.
Two more questions
Why can an undrawn card appear in Favourites?
Favourites records liking, while the copy count records draws. They are stored separately. Marking a heart creates no card and does not change draw probabilities.
Does exporting automatically continue the album on every device?
No automatic synchronisation occurs. Exporting creates a file to keep safely. A user must import a valid backup into another browser. This is different from account-based cloud sync.
Explore the project
Prepared by the portfolio editorial team from the project rules and existing code, with AI-assisted writing and translation. Calculations and suggested activities are not Monica’s quotations or personal records. Portfolio inclusion does not mean she independently completed every design or line of code. The album contains AI-assisted fan illustrations of existing characters; this article does not reproduce them.