Panda Novelist

AI-Powered novel co-creation app

Within the fast-paced start-up team, I collaborated with product manager and develop team to create the product from scratch, and launched the fully-functional product in 2 months. I drove the branding and product design process as the sole designer in a 6-person cross-functional startup team, gained over 10,000 users, 4207 novels, 6312 chapters, and 1.5 million words within 1st month.
Project
Generative AI
End-to-end delivery
Visual system
Team
Product Designer (Me)
Developer Team
Product Manager
My role
Product Designer
Timeline
June 2022 - Aug 2022
Impact
Where we landed in first launch in 1 month.

10,000+

4,207

6,312

New users
New novels
Chapters
Words

1.5 M.

Solution
An AI-Powered round-robin novel creation app to spread Langboat.
Feature 1
Explore the novel community

Users can see all the public novels in the community, and choose whichever they want to participate in writing. It can also show the new users an active community of serial novel writing, which encourage them to be part of it.

Feature 2
Select a novel and continue the writing

Users can see all the public novels in the community, and choose whichever they want to participate in writing. It can also show the new users an active community of serial novel writing, which encourage them to be part of it.

Feature 3
Set up a novel from scratch with AI-assistant

When starting a new novel, the user only needs to enter the name of the novel, and add a few inspirational details to generate a new novel.

Feature 4
Share the created novel to social media

After completing the creation of a novel, users have the option to share the poster of the generated novel to social media postings, or can send it directly to friends and family via a message card to invite others to read the novel, as well as to participate in the creation of the novel.

Business goal

Langboat wants to enhance its social impact.

Langboat Tech, a cognitive intelligence startup, offers innovative SaaS solutions but has limited public visibility. To increase its influence, Langboat developed a consumer-focused AI-assisted novel writing tool which was powered by its language model. It aims to captivate the public by enabling them to create and share their own novels, thereby boosting Langboat's profile.

Design goal
How might we design an AI-powered novel creation tool that can quickly spread among users?

We can conclude from this vision that the product experience we wanted to create should be something that engages people to participate and makes them willing to share. Therefore, in the following research, we investigated the corresponding user behaviors.

Market research

These are the keys that they succeed through sharing.

Analogous products analysis

User research
Understand users' motivation and needs for sharing through analogous testing and interviews.

From UX designer's perspective, I need to understand what users' needs can be satisfied by sharing in order to make users and business co-create value, so I use the above mentioned products with similar features to test with users to understand their needs when using the sharing feature. I also followed up with directed-storytelling to understand users' motivation when sharing.

Ideation
Collaboration with AI engineers helped our ideation move fast.

With the research findings in mind, I invited the AI engineers to brainstorm solutions together. I presented the research findings to the AI engineers, and they provided the scope of the AI model's functionality. We came up with as many ideas as possible, and then discussed the feasibility.

Ideation workshop with AI engineers

Feature concept
A round-robin story, spread in 3 ways.

Considering the launching time constraints, I decided to prioritize the collaborative serial writing - the AI model's functionality has the ability to continue generating the following based on the previous and provided directions, combining this functionality with the writing community so that users can post their novels to invite others to continue, as well as continue others' novels to form an interactive and well-connected community.

Feature design
User flow centered around collaborative serial writing and sharing.

Regarding the core features of serial novel writing and sharings, I have further improved other features and refined the interface design, resulting in the complete user workflow as follows.

Impact
Where we landed in first launch in 1 month.

10,000+

4,207

New users
New novels
Chapters
Words

6,312

1.5 M.

Iteration

The sharing on social media could be more engaging.

Due to time constraints at the time of the first launch, the form of social media sharing was not something we had considered in depth. The company's stakeholders asked for a design that would increase the click-through rate of social media posts. So I did a round of iterations on the sharing format.

To gain insights into how users interact with and perceive current sharing forms, I conducted a user testing phase with this feature. This involved a contextual inquiry with 8 participants and a closed beta testing involving 20+ internal employees.

After testing with internal staff and consulting with stakeholders, we decided to use posters instead of hyperlinks for public sharing, as well as updated hyperlinked cards for sharing within chat boxes.

Impact
The new sharing format worked well.

34%↑

2,000+

Click through rate
New users
Reflection
Business goals and user needs are not mutually exclusive.

In working on the AI novel generation product, a key takeaway for me as a UX designer was the harmonious alignment between business goals and user needs. This project underscored the importance of creating a product that not only serves the company's objective of spreading its influence but also resonates with the users by providing an engaging and enjoyable experience. By integrating AI technology for novel generation, we catered to the users' desire for novel and entertaining content, which in turn encourages them to share their experiences with others. This sharing not only enhances user engagement but also naturally extends the company's reach and impact, demonstrating a symbiotic relationship between business objectives and user satisfaction. The process of identifying and addressing user needs was instrumental in shaping a product that is not just a tool for business growth but also a source of delight and engagement for its users. This experience reinforced the idea that when user needs are met with innovation and empathy, it naturally aligns with and furthers business goals, creating a win-win scenario.