Papyrus

Scaffolding the Fiction Writing Process

Team

2 Designers (me)
1 Strategist
1 Researcher

My Roles

UX design
UI & visual design
Research

Context

University of Washington
MHCI+D Capstone
Jan – Aug 2023

Papyrus is a story development and writing environment designed for fiction. It allows writers to create robust notes and research, which they can interact with to flesh out narrative elements and recall information as needed throughout the writing process.

Create a library of multi-media notes as you develop the foundations of your story

Use and categorize notes however suits your workflow, from research references, to plot point summaries, to comprehensive character profiles.

Use your notes to populate dynamic visualizations of settings, timelines, relationships, and beyond

Expand on information notes can represent by using them to populate a map, or detailing how they relate like event sequences or character relationships.

Recall anything you've added, anywhere; access them in panels or tabs, or make text-based requests to a virtual librarian

Use contextually dynamic panels to pull up notes at any time, keep anything open in tabs, and request any information you've created with any descriptor through an AI-supported librarian.

Background

Writing fiction is an intensive process, and fleshing out the seedlings of a story idea into a cohesive narrative demands significant time and effort—but tech-based interventions sometimes take the wrong approach.

Some recent products have purported to assist the writing process by AI-generating writing or ideas. However, research has shown this interaction paradigm to be in conflict with how many writers approach the process, as well as their values, and it's even coming to be considered a disruptive presence to the industry.

We believed there was an opportunity to leverage technology in a way that supports writers in a way aligned to their values and processes.

Secondary research (academia, journalism, products)

Establishing context for the space of tech-aided writing

Interview data affinity mapping

Going through transcripts and determining themes

Research

We interviewed 9 fiction writers and 2 subject matter experts to answer the following research questions, to identify pain points and design opportunities.

How do fiction writers currently write from start to finish?

How does feedback or collaboration factor into their processes?

How do they feel about tech and AI in relationship to writing?

“When people who aren't writers think about writing, they think about actually writing things down on a page [...] what you actually do is you take huge quantities of notes.”

– P1, Novelist and Essayist

“There's nothing bad about using a tool. What's bad is when you just take what that tool produces, and you know, publish it.”

– P6, Romance Novelist

“I will create documents that are like Wikipedias of the universe in which I am writing so that I can have a consistent reference point for everything.”

– P2, Speculative Sci-Fi Writer

Key Findings

✷

Writers are passionate about their craft and want to maintain full ownership over the writing process, even through hurdles like writer’s block.

✷

Some writers think tech and AI have potential to support the writing process in an explicitly supporting role (i.e. not generating writing for them).

✷

A large portion of the effort that goes into writing fiction is the development of the research and groundwork that inform a story, which can be scattered across tools and/or mediums.

Design Principles

We developed design principles to ensure design solutions aligned with writers' values and concerns we found salient in the research.

Respect the craft

Preserve what writers love about writing; enhance it rather than look for shortcuts

Flexible & adaptable

Make room for writers’ highly individualized processes and goals, don't force any one framework

Agency & ownership

Play a supporting role in the intent and goals of the writer without being overbearing or intrusive

Consider the writing ecosystem

Consider broader implications of an intervention for writing communities and industry practices

Ideation

I and my teammates each created 20 ideas—80 total—from realistic to speculative. At this stage, we wanted to remain open to a wide variety of opportunities across ideation, draft writing, editing, and publishing stages.

Design Direction

We saw an opportunity to support writers in the creation and retrieval of the detailed information needed to develop the worlds of their stories.

Competitive Analysis

We felt a creative approach to information management was an area where a more sophisticated tool could create real utility for writers. That being said, there are some existing tools in this space, which we took a look at to investigate what has worked and what hasn't.

Scrivener

+ Popular among writers, flexible text file views and organization
– Limited only to text files, very static and outdated UI design

World Anvil

+ Advanced wiki system designed for detailed world-building
– Very prescriptive system, targeted towards fantasy genres

Notion & Others

+ Comprehensive digital note creation, easy global navigation
– Time investment & learning curve, not designed for writers

Sudowrite

+ Attempting to integrate AI to aid writing ideation/iteration
– Many writers feel it oversteps, and are critical of data scraping

Storyboarding

Through whiteboarding and storyboarding, we created a high-level concept for a web app integrating notes and draft writing fluidly, integrating natural language processing to contextually access information like a "librarian."

We ideated as a group across many sessions, and brainstormed features and interactions to explore iteratively through storyboarding. The goal was to envision usage in context to determine how aligned our feature ideas were with we understood about the writing process.

Concept Evaluation

We decided to use our storyboards to do a concept evaluation with a research participant to corroborate our ideas about how writers might approach our interaction concept.

First storyboard iteration

Envisioning a high-level experience that supports note-taking, ideation, and writing processes in tandem, based on our research

Concept evaluation

We presented this storyboard to one of our research participants to learn how aligned the concept was with writers' needs and processes

Initial Learnings

The concept evaluation overturned some assumptions about how notes are used, and uncovered potential for more visual ways to develop story details, like maps and diagrams.

Because note-taking was so emphasized by our participants as foundational to developing story ideas, we had focused on this aspect, but our participant spoke to a lack of writing-focused tools to support tasks like creating world maps or family trees.

Storyboarding a Map Creator

Our new storyboards explored utility of a map building tool, and how to connect this process with others like note creation and draft writing

Screens On Screens

We iterated on many screens and interactions at various fidelities, to begin determining look and feel in tandem with defining features

Iteration

While continuing to storyboard new interaction concepts, my teammate and I began iteratively wireframing in tandem, working together to clarify features, architecture, and UI.

My teammate spearheaded high level UX architecture and navigation which I iterated on to explore ideas for feature, screens, and UI. We analyzed and hybridized existing successful UI patterns from a variety of popular apps for note-taking, writing, and ideation, and took inspiration from design software as well.

Mid-Fi Wireframes / Initial Feature Concepts

Notecards

Modals accessible from anywhere to create, edit, or reference, supporting categorization and multimedia.

Map & Timeline

Map and a timeline that can be populated with notecard data; a visual way to flesh out elements.

Manuscript & Librarian

A familiar text editing environment, plus a virtual assistant to interact with global project text data.

Finalizing Features

Iterating on wireframes, we settled on 5 features supporting key parts of ideation and writing, that could all be used in tandem to support a non-linear process. This included adding an additional feature: a whiteboard for flexible diagramming.

We originally envisioned an all-in-one story development playground that featured map and timeline creation. However, we decided this feature was getting unfocused and confusing, so we split it up into two features, expanding "timeline" functionality into a more flexible space to use notes to create diagrams, inspired by other digital whiteboarding tools like Figjam and Miro.

Integrated Map/Timeline Feature

We originally considered this route as a sort of global story tracker, but later decided it was too unfocused & confusing

→

Map Feature & Whiteboard Feature

Separate features with distinct intentions, plus opening flexibility to create diagrams beyond timelines

Visual Design
System

In order to support diverse and complex functionalities, I established a flexible visual design system, including typography, colors, and UI widgets, and implemented it into screen designs in collaboration with my teammate.

Visual design decisions were highly shaped by making complex functionality digestible and intuitive, such as a color system for categorization, varying notecard views, type treatment in a wide variety of contexts, and more. I drew inspiration from traditional editorial design while integrating a sense of quirkiness, reflecting the idiosyncrasies and joy writers incorporate into their craft.

Refined Design

In our high-fi prototype, we synthesized our features and UI into a system of collapsable panels and tab-based navigation to support juggling a variety of files, information, and modalities throughout the writing process.

Feature / Notecards

Build and categorize a compendium of multi-media notecards

Notecards are designed to facilitate any style of note-taking and/or research collection to build the framework of a story, from character biographies, to niche research, to spontaneous inspiration
Notecards can be custom categorized and tagged to create an easily searchable library for any project

✷

Designed based on what we learned about writers' robust note-taking processes, as well as difficulties with mainstream tools

Feature / Maps

Design detailed maps and situate notecards in context

Upload a map drawing or create from scratch; insert or generate details as desired to create visualizations that can be used to map out any kind of world
Populate the map using Notecards, establishing locations or plot events to track timelines or character journeys through space

✷

Designed based on described complexities of tracking information and maintaining consistency while world building

Feature / Whiteboard

Define relationships between notecards as metadata

Whiteboard mode is intended to be a flexible ideation space to draw connections between notecards, such as character relationships or timelines
Connections can be defined with titles and text descriptions, which is stored in the project globally and can be pulled up at any time by the librarian for reference

✷

Designed based on the described complexities of tracking the constantly developing details of a story

Feature / Librarian & Navigation

Access anything while writing with tabs, panels, and a virtual librarian

Manuscript files are a familiar writing environment, enhanced with a virtual librarian utilizing NLP that can pull from any file type using descriptive text prompts, for referencing or inspiration
A system of tabs, collapsible panels, and right-click interactions opens up many windows of accessing files or writing from anywhere to stay in the creative flow

✷

Designed to support a described process of jumping back and forth between ideation and draft writing

Feature / AI & Data Control

Take control of AI integration

The librarian functionality utilizes NLP/AI to analyze text and offer dynamic responses to requests—in light of this we included options to control its integration and what it has access to
Risks regarding AI and data privacy should always be addressed, but we found them to be of particular concern to this audience; principled and transparent application is critical to maintain trust

✷

Designed based on concerns participants expressed about data privacy and risks posed by AI

Takeaways

Throughout this process, I learned the challenge and importance of advocating for your audience through design, especially amid developing technologies.

In many ways what we were really exploring through this project is how we can align technology to truly support creativity and the creative process, rather than purely focus on maximizing ease or productivity, a mindset which in my opinion does not always help people further their craft in a meaningful way.

Because the processes and daily lives of writers were not at all part of our existing knowledge and experiences, the our research participants and data were critical in leading us towards a viable path, and concept evaluation was critical to identifying our blindspots.

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