I frequently visit Archive of Our Own (AO3) is an open-source, nonprofit hosting site for fanworks such as novels, fanfictions, and fanart. Although the site is extremely popular among various fandoms, its UX & UI design is quite outdated and in need of improvement.
AO3 has multiple features that make it the most popular among the fanfiction pages. On the platform, signed up users can read and create stories, begin discussions, bookmark works and customize their own reading experience. I particularly like its With the filtering and exploring system, which offers multiple ways to categorize and ensures you can precisely find the content you're looking for. Impressively, the language filter even includes certain Chinese regional dialects. With the filtering and exploring system, as well as the large amount of stories, the platform offers something for every user. It is supposed to be a collection of works the users can expand and add to.
The concept of AO3 is great, but the execution and design of the website is outdated and very complicated for beginners to the platform. Before users get access to the content of a story they get overwhelmed with information that is often unnecessary, while important information, such as if a story is completed or not, can easily be overlooked. The tags for important information like this are often vague or tricky to spot.
AO3 does not offer a mobile version and the formatting in the browser view is not optimized. The page utilizes outdated forms, panels and tagging systems that make the page seem overwhelming and disorganized. This should be improved to enhance the user experience and comfort during reading.
Athough I already possess a foundational knowledge of it—I know how to write basic web pages, I'm eager to delve deeper into creating visually appealing designs by utilizing richer CSS styles to enhance my website. I'm particularly interested in incorporating animations, unique web cursors, and even storytelling elements through web pages, which I find fascinating. I believe that utilizing resources like W3Schools and Codecademy will be instrumental in helping me acquire these advanced skills.