Overview
Researching Native Social Features for Manga Communities
Role
UX Researcher
Platform
Mobile and Web
Duration
End-to-end research engagement
Skills
User Research, Social Media, Mobile and Web
Context
About this project
VoyceMe is a US-based manga and webtoon platform with a vision to become the first creative supermarket in the entertainment, anime, manga, and gaming industry. In 2023, the product team explored whether to build a native social media space — including community features, collectibles, and gamification — for manga creators and their fan communities.
My Role
I led end-to-end research for this initiative, including scoping the research questions, recruiting participants, facilitating focus group discussions (FGDs), designing mid-fidelity mockups as conversation artifacts, synthesizing findings across three research areas, and presenting the recommendation to the product team.
Problem
The challenge we set out to solve
Should VoyceMe invest in building native social features? The question had two distinct dimensions: whether creators would migrate and host their communities on the platform, and whether fans would show up and actively participate if those spaces existed.
How Might We
How might we discover what social features, collectibles, and gamification mechanics would genuinely motivate VoyceMe users to engage more deeply — and how might we cultivate a stronger community across both web and mobile?
Research
What we learned before designing
A quick note: I've replaced the original mockup to respect my confidentiality agreement with VoyceMe. What's shown here reflects the general type of mid-fidelity prototype we used to ground the conversation during sessions — not the exact screens.
Would creators build and host their communities on VoyceMe if given the tools — and did they already have established communities elsewhere?
If creator spaces existed on VoyceMe, would fans show up and actively participate?
Methodology — Focus Group Discussions (FGD) paired with mid-fidelity mockup reviews
The question was fundamentally behavioral — we needed to understand not just what people wanted, but whether they would actually change their habits. Mid-fidelity mockups of profile pages, collectibles, and quests grounded the conversation in something tangible, moving participants from hypothetical responses to more realistic reactions.
Research Goals
- •Understand what social features users think would make VoyceMe better
- •Understand what motivates a user to participate in quests
- •Understand what motivates a user to collect frames, badges, and avatars
- •Discover how VoyceMe can become more interactive as a platform
- •Understand how to further cultivate the VM community across web and mobile
Collectibles
Explored user motivation around profile customization — avatars, banners, frames, and badges. Key questions: What platforms do they already use for this? What would motivate them to collect on VoyceMe specifically?
- •What apps or websites allow you to buy items to customize your profile, and what do you like or dislike about them?
- •What would motivate you to collect VM avatars, banners, frames, and badges?
- •How would you want to customize your VM profile?
Gamification
Explored user expectations around quests, leaderboards, and reward systems. Key questions: How important is competition? What kinds of rewards feel motivating? How frequently should challenges refresh?
- •What are your initial expectations regarding quests and leaderboards?
- •How important is competition to you when it comes to gamification on VoyceMe?
- •What types of rewards do you find motivating in gamification features?
- •How frequently would you like to see new quests or challenges added?
- •Are there gamification features on other platforms that could be adapted to VoyceMe?
Community
Explored the existing VoyceMe community dynamic and what would make the platform more interactive. Participants also reacted to live mockups of profile pages, collectibles, and quests.
- •Can you describe the VM community from your experience? What brings the community together?
- •What do the VM platforms need to make them more interactive or engaging?
- •Are there specific social or community features you want to see on the VM platforms?
FGD Discussion Guide
A structured 3-part discussion guide covering collectibles, gamification, and community — used to facilitate remote focus group sessions with both creator and fan participants.
Mid-fidelity mockups
Prototype screens of profile pages, sample collectibles, and quest flows shown to participants during Part 4 of the FGD to ground reactions in tangible design concepts rather than hypotheticals.
Creators were already deeply rooted elsewhere
Creators had established, active communities on Twitter/X and TikTok with no real incentive to rebuild from scratch on a new platform. The switching cost was too high.
Fan participation was creator-dependent
Without creators leading the way and actively hosting their communities on VoyceMe, fans had little reason to show up. The two user groups were deeply interdependent.
Behavioral intent ≠ stated interest
Some participants expressed enthusiasm for the concept in the abstract, but when grounded in the mockups and asked about their actual habits, the likelihood of behavior change dropped significantly.
Collectibles and gamification had more potential than community spaces
While the native social space showed low adoption potential, participants responded more positively to profile customization and quest mechanics — suggesting these could be pursued independently.
Reflection
What I learned
The interdependency between the two groups was also a key finding: a community feature only works if both sides show up, and understanding which group needed to move first was critical to the recommendation.
The interdependency between the two groups was also a key finding: a community feature only works if both sides show up, and understanding which group needed to move first was critical to the recommendation. Recommending we drop the feature entirely — rather than proposing a scaled-down version of it — was the less obvious path. It would have been easier to suggest a smaller community feature and call the research a partial validation. Choosing to recommend killing it outright required being confident the evidence was strong enough to override the existing roadmap assumption.
Impact
Feature deprioritized based on evidence
The recommendation was accepted by the product team, preventing resource allocation toward a social feature with low adoption potential.
Clearer product focus
By ruling out the native social space, the team could redirect energy toward the core webtoon experience — where both creators and fans were already engaged.
Collectibles and gamification kept on the roadmap
While the community space was dropped, the positive signals around collectibles and quests gave the team a more targeted direction for future engagement features.