GoComics is the world's largest online archive of comic strips. During its redesign in 2021 they added a new feature: Comic Collections. Similar to Pinterest boards, users can create and organize comic strips into collections. With the launch of this new feature came the need for internal administrators to view, organize, and search for comic collections.
GoComics Content Admin Dashboard Design
2022
Product Design
The Goal
The goal of this design was to create a dashboard where internal administrative GoComics users could search for comic collections, filter their results, and create collections, all in one place. We expected our design to reduce the amount of time administrative users spent searching for comic collections (in comparison to the current workflow, which is not integrated into the site) and allow them to quickly flag and approve content to be featured on the site and social media.
The Solutions
A key component of the design was to add search capabilities so that administrative users could quickly view results for specific comics or keywords found in collection descriptions.
We also built in a filter toggle so that administrative users could easily switch between admin created (collections created by GoComics) and user created (collections created by members of GoComics) comic collections. This filter made it easier for administrative users to to flag GoComics user’s collections as well as quickly review internal collections we wished to promote.
We built in sorting capabilities so that administrative users could easily manage multiple columns of data. Our “Approved” column also allowed administrative users to quickly approve comic collections to be featured on the site and social media. This also sped up workflows, as it became the source of truth for content approval for the team.
Lastly, if an administrative user couldn’t quite find what they were looking for, the dashboard included a “create collection” module. This would take the user to the section of the site that would allow them to create an entirely new collection.
A snapshot of the comic collections dashboard across breakpoints
Takeaways
I brought in the Content Specialist early on in this process, which proved to be very beneficial. The Content Specialist was the main administrative user on GoComics, so I had the unique opportunity of having my user at my disposal to ask questions and user-test. She was able to tell me exactly what her requirements and requests were with the dashboard, and after a few iterations, I was able to design something for her specific needs.