Thousands of young writers and artists around the world come together online and participate in role-playing (think Dungeons and Dragons-style character creation, not the kinky stuff). For many, they've been involved in the community for years, and it's their primary hobby. Since it is more of a niche, there currently isn't a website that exists that provides members a place for them to post art and writing equally. People have made do on multiple social media such as Twitter, Skype, and Tumblr (even MySpace, back in the day). Often, they resort to using more than one site, which contributes to my belief that there is a need for one single website for them.
I easily identified several prototypical customers as those who are role-playing hobbyists online. Most of their answers were very similar to the idea that I already have, probably because I also participate in the community. For background info, my questions were primarily aimed at identifying issues with the most popular website online role-players use, DeviantArt.
My first interviewee complained of there being no good way for her to advertise her role-playing community on DeviantArt (dA for short), so she typically referred to other social media instead, such as Twitter.
My second interviewee mostly discussed how dA is over a decade old and still has many outdated features, making it un-user-friendly. The interface was confusing and ugly, and better-looking options were only available for premium members. While this makes some sort of sense on one hand, it also ends up making the website look ugly to first-time visitors.
My third interviewee explained that since communicating on dA is difficult due to glitchy forums and chatrooms, feedback is hard to gather because locating a community is so difficult. Morale has been lowered, so most are unwilling to give any helpful feedback at this point due to effort required. Again, the outdated and buggy HTML coding was mentioned.
After interviewing these people, my view has changed little beyond making me realize that if I were to take up this project seriously, I would need a coder. Since this idea would be launching a website, half of the trouble would be knowing what is possible- and I am only familiar with HTML and Java. Nevertheless, I am pleased that this seems viable, for any alternatives that have launched in the past have not been successful enough to be considered competitors.
My first interviewee complained of there being no good way for her to advertise her role-playing community on DeviantArt (dA for short), so she typically referred to other social media instead, such as Twitter.
My second interviewee mostly discussed how dA is over a decade old and still has many outdated features, making it un-user-friendly. The interface was confusing and ugly, and better-looking options were only available for premium members. While this makes some sort of sense on one hand, it also ends up making the website look ugly to first-time visitors.
My third interviewee explained that since communicating on dA is difficult due to glitchy forums and chatrooms, feedback is hard to gather because locating a community is so difficult. Morale has been lowered, so most are unwilling to give any helpful feedback at this point due to effort required. Again, the outdated and buggy HTML coding was mentioned.
After interviewing these people, my view has changed little beyond making me realize that if I were to take up this project seriously, I would need a coder. Since this idea would be launching a website, half of the trouble would be knowing what is possible- and I am only familiar with HTML and Java. Nevertheless, I am pleased that this seems viable, for any alternatives that have launched in the past have not been successful enough to be considered competitors.
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