A page for each person in your family tree

Every person in a Shijro family tree has their own page. It tells their life in order: when they were born, the stories told by and about them, when they married, their children, and, for someone who has died, when they died and where they rest. The dates the tree already holds mark out the life, and each story is placed between them.

Why each person gets a page

A family tree usually shows a person as a name and two dates. I wanted each person in Shijro to read more like a short biography that the whole family writes over time. Dorothy Moretti’s page in the Hartleys, the sample family, shows her birth in 1931, her recorded answers to her grandchildren’s questions, her marriage to Giovanni, and her children, in that order.

Recordings in the person’s own voice are grouped under “In their words”, so you can hear them tell it themselves.

Dates you only half know

Family history is full of “around 1920”. In Shijro a date can be exact, a month and year, just a year, or empty. Shijro never fills in a day nobody knows.

Living or passed away

You mark someone as living or passed away yourself. Shijro doesn’t guess from whether a death date was entered, because plenty of families know that someone died without knowing when. Their photo changes from a filled circle to an open ring.

Where they rest

For someone who has died, their page can say where they rest: the place in words, a pin for the grave, and a photo of the headstone chosen from their photos. To set the pin, paste a maps link or type the coordinates. Anyone in the family can then open it in their maps app and find the grave. I chose a pasted pin so Shijro never needs to ask for your location.

How they’re related to you

Once you’ve said which person in the tree you are, each page also says how that person is related to you, and a tap shows every person between you.