Hafsa Khan App Research, Review, and Analysis GRDS 387 A01 Interface Design Professor Holly Quarzo

Transcription

1 Hafsa Khan App Research, Review, and Analysis GRDS 387 A01 Interface Design Professor Holly Quarzo

2 Devices competitor Discover Wattpad: At Wattpad, we re connecting a global community through the power of the story. On Wattpad, you ll find all the stories to keep you hooked! Discover stories and books created by writers around the world! Whatever you re into whether it s romance, science fiction, mystery, comedy, action adventure, fantasy, young adult fiction, or fanfiction you ll find it all on Wattpad. Read: Save your favorite stories and take them with you wherever you go. Can t put Wattpad down? Simply sync your account so you can easily pick up where you left off, whether you re on your laptop, tablet, Kindle, or phone. Connect: Join the community! Connect directly with writers and other readers and discuss the latest plot twists by leaving comments alongside the latest stories. React in real time as new chapters are added, share your favorite lines, or create beautiful visual quotes. Read together and share your library or create reading lists so your friends always know what you re reading. Write: Got your own story to tell? Publish it on Wattpad and share it with our supportive community. Create a new draft, add chapters to an existing story, or add a cover, all from the app. You can even get creative with one of our monthly writing challenges. When inspiration strikes, you ll have Wattpad right in your pocket. Stories you ll love. Discover stories from well-known authors including Anna Todd, Scott Westerfeld, Tyler Oakley, Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho, RL Stine, Dan Brown, Christopher Pike, Pharrell, Zayn, Felicia Day, Jennifer Armentrout, Meg Cabot, Marissa Meyer, Gena Showalter, Hugh Howey, Kevin J Anderson, and Maureen Johnson.

3 Devices Essentially, the intended target audience is readers and writers who are interested in a book community. The app would be a way for them to socialize and share ideas and opinions on various stories. While there are users of many ages, the majority of authors are teens. However, Wattpad s Terms of Service states that you must be at least 13 years old to use the app. This terms applies to many social media apps due to child safety purposes. competitor

4 It is required for the user to create an account before he or she can use the app. can connect with a Facebook or Google account, or they can create one using an . The downside to a first-time user is not being able to explore the app before creating an account. It would be better if the user could browse through several genres, and if they wanted to continue reading a story, the app could ask for a login again. To create an account, the user s birthday must be included, and the app explains that they would like this information to offer better recommendations for a given age. Being able to provide an explanation for asking certain information allows the business to be clear with their consumers on how they will use it. This is successful because it shows the user that the app can filter based on age and preferences.

5 The organization of content is based on the navigational tray at the bottom of the app. Within each tab, more tabs of content are presented. For example, in the home tab, there is a browse and recommended tab. Additionally, the top bar consists of the logo and location in the app. For the browsing section, a list of genres are provided to choose from. Once a genre is selected, a second list of genres are presented, some of which are repeated while others are new. At first look, it is confusing to see this because it is not clear on why another list appears. However, after looking further several times, it seems that it is allowing the user to choose a more specific topic within the first selected genre. As the user continues to spend time in the app, more stories would be recommended based on reading, voting, and popularity. This is successful because it opens up to more options that the reader would like or experience something different.

6 The library section is a place to save all of the stories that the user has read or is currently reading. The tabs within this section include current reads, archive, and reading lists. This is better organization for the user to place books separately instead of having one large section of books. Display of the stories (list/grid, sort by) is available based on the user s preferences. It allows to categorize based on author, title, recently read, recently added and recently updated. Each book that has been read or currently reading has a progress bar that shows how far the reader is in the book. If a story is updated, a new icon will pop up on the bar to show that more has been added. Most often, readers like to know how far they ve progressed through the story, so this is a good feature to include.

7 When selecting the pencil icon on the navigation tray, the app allows you to create your own story to publish on your account. This can be done on the mobile version, but I would say that this is better to do using the ipad or the website version on a laptop to do this because it is easier to type. Regardless, this section offers the basics of writing a story including text placement and attachments of media (images, videos). It is useful because the writer has freedom to write about whatever he or she chooses, and it can be updated at any time. The one thing that could cause a problem for both writers and readers is that the text is not spell-checked or grammar-checked like how a Word document would have. I think there should be the option to correct a mistake that might be ovelooked or the writer does not know how to formuate a certain phrase. This is beneficial to the reader as well because the story is clear to understand.

8 The updates section notifies the user of any messages or changes to a story. By following other users, you can know their activity and the messages that they post of their Message Board. Something that could improve this experience is to have a filter similar to the Sort by in the Library section. For someone who is following multiple accounts and is reading several books at a time, the updates and messages can get cluttered and hard to find. It would be easier for the user to choose what they would like to see in their updates feed.

9 The layout for when the user is in the book is successful. At the end of a sentence or paragraph, a comment bubble shows how many people have commented on that specific part, and the user can read through and share their own comments. By tapping anywhere on the screen, information about the book shows up in the top bar such as the title and the table of contents which is easier to navigate through if the user wants to get to a specific chapter. Modifications on the text size and display color can be accessed in the topbar as well for those who cannot see well or would like to change to nighttime mode. At the bottom, the stats of voting, comments, and shares are shown for the book.