What is QUILLWEAVER?

No more boring story apps; QUILLWEAVER empowers writers and comic creators to bring their stories to life through vivid visualization tools. Seamlessly weave intricate plots, dynamic characters, and immersive worlds, turning every idea into a captivating masterpiece!

Problem

There are a lack of apps catered towards comic creators, one that remains engaging and unique to keep creators inspired.

Solution

Create an app for hobbyists that aim to streamline the creative process and provide a centralized hub for managing every aspect of a series.

Design Process

When taking up this idea, I initially kickstarted off the idea of having something that I, and many of my artists friends would love to have. As we have tried other apps and eventually lost interest in them not long after, reverting back to google docs or other sources.

User Research

Totaling at 33 responses, I set out to create a questionnaire for artists, writers and anyone that fits within those creative categories to see

Results

  • The biggest age range was 18-25
  • Most users write their ideas as a hobby, but would love to be professional in their respective fields.
  • Most users rely on Google Docs and Word for their progress.
  • Most would prefer the ability to organize Plot points in their series. Secondly, They’d prefer having all their ideas in one spot/easy to collaborate others on.

Persona

Emily is a 24 year old aspiring novelist, with a drawing hobby on the side. With school taking up lots of time, she would like to be able to write her ideas down quickly when they pop up, or when she has inspiration. She usually uses her notes app to write things down on her phone, but she would prefer more structure.

Emily Graham

Passionate - Driven - Artistic

  • Goals
    To Publish a novel in the future, Organize her Comic universe, and graduate on time.
  • Challenges
    She doesn’t have a lot of time between classes to add ideas for her novel. Her family typically travels a lot on vacations, and due to anxiety about losing her laptop, she doesn’t take it with her.

Logo

I knew from the beginning that I would love to have the logo and my mascot have a sense of cohesiveness. As the main imagery of my app is the an ink droplet and the Quill pen that it comes from.
Since most writing is done online nowadays, I liked the irony that came with applying the use of a quill and ink to an app.

In the beginning stages, I did have a vision of the app being more sleak, almost something akin to those early iphone app store or even windows 98 office suite feel. But with having a mascot involved, it seems too divided. Being unable to tell if this is an app for published writers or a simple hobbyist!
With that, the gradient and monochrome colors were dumped for a more solid, complementary colors.

Mascot

The most entertaining development was surely Quilliam's evolution. As mentioned earlier, Quilliam is an ink droplet, alive from your drive to create! Much like the logo, he would also have a gradient color scheme before becoming more of a vector drawn mascot. Starting with his cartoonish face, it's since evolved from simple round eyes to keyboard symbols. His many expressions would reference both American emoticons and Japanese 'kaomojis', adding to his adorable nature.  
The shape of his body had remained the same throughout his development, as he started to resemble a ghost at one point. And when attempting the actual droplet shape, it let no room for the hat, thus keeping his body an angle as if the droplet is flying away from a pen.

Layout

Adding onto the ink theme, I've transformed the almost blank layout into a more kinetic layout, each section having it's own dripping header, giving the all a more asymmetrical presence. For the home button, I was juggling between the option of having it on the corner versus the usual middle position. At the end of my exploration, I've settled on the middle positions, so if the menu was needed, it wouldn't be accidentally tapped on by the user. Which also crosses over in my long standing design choice; tabs.  Since the wireframe stages, I've incorporated about two to four tabs on the right side of the the layout, which would always be available to the user so they wouldn't have to always tap the menu button.

Upon user testing with a few people, a couple of problems had arose, The assumption that the app was in landscape since the tabs would appear first when it loads in on my prototype. As well has the thumb accidentally hitting a tab that was unwanted. I've since opted to include a button on the bottom right side of the menu, one to open up the options for tabs when needed. Those same tabs can still be accessed by going through the series it self, it just serves as a quicker gate way to these sections.

Reflection

Working on Quillweaver was a long but fun journey, It has opened my eyes to just how much goes into developing a database type of app. One thing I would  love to revisit is reincorporating the tabs into the library or series sections, that's one feature I believe could be successfully integrated into the current final design. I'd also prefer to create a more obvious way to get to Quilliam's ink pot, since it's just an option in the menu to keep the home page from looking too busy. Overall, all of my takeaways from developing this prototype has since given me a deeper look into the smaller questions that cannot be overlooked when making UX decisions. Questions such as how someone may interact with this kind of app, If this kayout could be overwhelming to some but inviting to most, or even how they may prefer to hold their phone and how that may affect their experience when using Quillweaver!