Manime
An application prototype designed solely for streaming anime and reading manga. It also contains a social platform, where viewers can connect with like-minded people and share their work.
Software Used—Figma, Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Indesign Categories—User Interface Design, User Experience Design, User Research, Mobile Application Design, Application PrototypeProject Completion—May 2022
Clickable prototype:
the project and its code can also be found on: figma
Introduction:
I came up with an idea of designing an application solely for streaming anime and reading manga, where users could also connect with other like-minded people and share their works.
Before starting with the design, I conducted some user interviews to understand their views and need for this app which helped me in designing the wireframes for the app. The final design system for the application was inspired by manga visuals, like, text bubbles became text fields and buttons, manga frames became frames to represent the content, etc. All the icons were hand drawn and typefaces like comic neue and nerko one were used to give it a feeling of reading a manga/comic book.
App Idea and Problem Statement:
Anime and Manga lovers need a place to watch anime and read manga in the same space along with thier friends, without much distractions. Users can also connect to other like-minded people to share and publish their works and ideas.
Desired Impact and Competitive Analysis:
The anime and manga lovers would be able to watch anime, read manga and also share their works and talk to other like minded people. They will also be able to search for corresponding manga chapters for each anime episode, while being able to write their views and share their works on the episode page itself. They can also easily watch their favorite shows with their friends simultaneously
Uderstanding similar streaming services on how they solve problems for their products, helped me come up with the design solutions that can me implemented or improved for my application. The current anime streaming apps that I studied include Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll and Funimation.
User Research and User Interviews:
Based on the User Research, this app provided a great opportunity for designing an interface that provided the corresponding manga chapters for each episodes. Also being able to filter out their search preferences, users can search for the shows they like easily based on genre, type and time of release.
Based on the interviews, the fellow anime and manga lovers would love to use such an application, and will probably be willing to pay as long as it is reasonable/cheap. According to the users, the app could also include a comment/discussion section after every anime episode/manga chapter. Also enabling the users to publish their own manga and talk about it with their fellow anime/manga enthusiasts. The app also needs to feature the best on-going and most popular anime based on the amount of views and ratings.
User Stories and Flow:
Wireframes:
Wireframes were designed based on the user flows, trying to achieve each step presented for the user flows.
Design Systems:
This app being about anime and manga, I took inspirations from the manga visuals like different types of chat bubbles and anime styled eyes. I also hand drew all the icons to give it a feeling of reading a manga.
Prototyped Version:
References—Various anime and manga and their character sketches