This project originated from a frustration that I’ve been personally experiencing since the dawn of (my time on) the internet. There isn’t a singular platform that is ideal for reading webcomics, whether that’s because of issues around unsolicited pop-ups & ads, wonky displays, bizarre navigation, or irrelevant recommendations.
I wanted to design an app that would alleviate the most disheartening parts of the webcomic reading experience, to encourage users to read more for fun, and to stimulate community interaction and activity.
I focused on competitive analysis to define where the problems lie, user scenarios, and high fidelity prototypes with a clear visual design.
Existing webcomic reading platforms seem to function solely as clunky, character-less databases that house webcomics. With the ever-increasing number of webcomics on the site, it can be challenging for readers to stay up-to-date on their favorite series and discover new comics that align with their interests.
I started by conducting a competitive analysis and discovered that readers typically access webcomics through apps like Tapas, Manta, or Webtoon; in-browser sites that have a similar sparse visual and clunky functional design; and through social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, where content is often reposted and shared without permission.
Then, I interviewed seven webcomic readers to identify their pain points and what features are essential, undesirable, or would be nice to have.
Whether it's a lack of personalized recommendations, a cluttered or confusing user interface, a lack of support for diverse comics and creators, or inadequate protections against the unauthorized sharing of content on social media, these challenges and lack of features are widespread problems across all the different mediums for webcomic reading.
My primary foci were identifying how users used the search features and community pages and how they explored new webcomics for different genres and their motivations for doing so.
In general, users don't find the available community pages useful and most users aren't even aware of the additional features, account creation, nor were they motivated to use these features or interact with community content. Users discover new webcomics through various methods: special promotions, simply browsing, etc., but don't rely on community content or other features to make reading decisions. Through analyzing the responses from the interviews, I identified three main themes that captured the readers' pain points.
I concluded that curated recommendations and community reviews are crucial for helping users make reading decisions, but these features must be more closely aligned with the user's individual reading experience, creating hyper-specific recommendations based on a reader’s mood and genre preferences.
The product ideation phase consisted of sketching out and ideating different ideas using the central concept and questions as a guide. I came up with a mobile app that would allow readers to align their recommendations with their mood, tastes, and reading time, incorporating data from community recommendations from similar users.
With more solidified ideas, this project then went through multiple rounds of development and feedback from test users, and then I finalized on a product design that would align with Inky's users’ goals.
I. Increase user’s awareness and motivation for creating an account
II. Make community content more engaging and relevant to users’ reading journeys
III. Tailor recommendations to the individual reader
I organized the general flow into 4 sub-flows: Onboarding (user data collection), Home (for reading), Search (for exploration), and My Library (for users to create their own libraries and collections).
Simple Interactions
& Intuitive Visuals
Until I was able to arrive at the design I wanted to mockup digitally, I first went through several iterations of hand sketching the Inky flow and screens.
My main criteria for these screens were whether or not the interactions and features utilized clear & simple UX structures that still communicated enough information for users to intuitively continue the flow.
Clean, Playful, & Neutral
After analyzing the existing webcomics platforms and taking into consideration the content that would be displayed, I ultimately went with a clean and direct UI in order not to detract or pull focus from the reading experience.
The color palette needed to be neutral, both to compliment the diversity in genre and to not look so jarring against the colorful content; nearly all users I interviewed stated that they prefer reading in dark mode, so my design took that into consideration as well.
I was limited by time constraints while working on this project, and for much of it, needed to make design decisions on what I (as the designer, but also as a long-time webcomic reader) would prefer in my reading experience.
If I had the opportunity to, I would:
I. Create a functional prototype and conduct user tests on whether these features are helpful for the reading experience.
II. Experiment with a range of features to drive community interaction and content.
III. Build metrics for measuring the success of these new features.