AI Reading Experience / 2024
AI Story Companion
An AI-assisted continuation experience that helps long-form fiction readers recover plot memory, character context, clues and worldbuilding after reading breaks.
Core pain
reading drop-off
Method
interviews + survey
AI workflow
ChatGPT + Codex + Figma
Interactive Prototype
Try the AI reading companion inside a phone frame.
Switch between recap, character map, clue timeline and AI Q&A to see how the experience helps readers return to a long story.
Overview
Long serial novels often contain hundreds of chapters, dense character relationships and multi-threaded narratives. The product gives readers a calm way back into the story before they abandon it.
Problem
Readers do not always quit because interest is gone. They quit because the story becomes hard to re-enter after days away.
Wireframe
The low-fidelity flow separates quick recall, deeper exploration and AI Q&A so readers can choose the smallest amount of help they need.
High Fidelity
The final UI uses a warm reading surface, clear hierarchy and light orange accents to preserve the feeling of reading rather than turning the flow into a dashboard.
Prototype
Prototype states include chapter recovery, character graph expansion, clue tracking and AI-generated recap cards.
Motion
Motion focuses on gentle memory reconstruction: cards unfold, timelines connect and character relationships draw in progressively.
Reflection
The project sharpened my belief that AI is most meaningful when it lowers cognitive friction without taking over the user's emotional relationship with the content.
Research
- Interviewed readers who follow long fantasy and web fiction series.
- Mapped competitor gaps across QQ Reading, Qidian and Qimao Reading.
- Compared recap, community and recommendation flows to understand where re-entry fails.
Insights
Plot memory decays quickly after a reading break, especially around day 7.
Readers need context before content: recap, characters, timeline and clues.
Community comments help, but they are noisy and unreliable for precise recall.
User Journey
01
Pause reading
02
Forget relationships
03
Open story companion
04
Scan recap and character map
05
Return to chapter with confidence
Project Portfolio
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