Untold

Democratised reading

Overview

As a Reddit fan, I spend much of my spare time reading short stories found there. However, numerous opportunities to improve user experience have been missed because Reddit's core functionality is so broad. For example, the reading experience is clear enough but distracting and unfocused. Given the number and popularity of horror stories, the lack of audio effects and AI-generated narration leaves the experience lacking. I realised there was a niche for a digital marketplace for self-published material similar to those short stories on Reddit. The platform will allow users to add the use of sound effects and audio cues as readers scroll through a given story, while the familiar video content-inspired UI calls back to both a well-understood UX pattern with a nod to the skeuomorphic, with book spines used to identify what you're looking for, like your own personal library. The rise of artificial intelligence and improvements to GPT-4 have made me consider including in-built functions to allow writers to set the plot and have GPT-4 construct the prose.