Creative Process Journal, 23-24.

Week 8

Following Andreas's advice, I researched several commercial reader extensions to see how they help users focus on text.

Reader View

This extension offers a function that eliminates unnecessary elements from web pages, allowing users to focus solely on the text content. The background is set to beige, and the extension enables users to customize the text design to their comfort level. Incorporating this feature into my work could allow users to read more comfortably through personalized design.

Just Read

This extension's primary feature is its ability to clean up web page designs for visual comfort. Its design centralizes text, changes linked text to blue, and generally creates a clean impression with minimal design elements. A notable feature allows users to delete unwanted elements (e.g., images, paragraphs) by interacting directly with the webpage's CSS.

These examples have increased my interest in user-customized design. During various user testing sessions, participants often asked if they could adjust font sizes, indicating a demand for such features and suggesting that customization could facilitate digital reading.

The first features to consider for customization were the ability to change font size and typography, as these could have the most significant visual impact and be easily adjusted by users.

Feedback and Reflection

'Reader View' and 'Just Read' offer clean and customizable interfaces. The former focuses on content concentration, while the latter emphasizes visual comfort and element control. User feedback indicates a demand for custom font sizes and typography, which I consider essential for enhancing digital reading.

These extensions demonstrate the potential of a customized reading experience to increase user engagement with digital content, and I have realized the importance of referencing these designs. However, considering the significant time already invested in coding the interaction elements, I am cautious of spending too much time implementing new features at the risk of lowering the overall visual design quality. Therefore, I plan to balance my time effectively as I work on adding these features.