Overview
For INKR’s internal content operations members who need to increase the output of their file handling process, Content Prep Tool is an ancillary native app that automates a lot of manual and repetitive tasks, such as file renaming, converting, and organizing.
Unlike previous attempts using the command-line interface, Content Prep Tool features a user-friendly graphical user interface.
I was part of the product team and single-handedly handled the design of the native app.
My Contribution
Concepts & Ideation
Enterprise UI/UX Design
Team
1 designer
1 product manager
2 engineers
Year
2019
Recap
When localizing comics, before the translation and typesetting can begin, we needed to receive the raw files sent to us by the publishers. Each publisher had its own way of production, and their file structure and format varied greatly, some would use Photoshop files, some would use TIF files, some Indesign files. Our account executives must manually open each file in their special program, export, rename, and then organized them according to the Localization Tool’s input requirements. This was incredibly repetitive and soul-crushing for the account executives, and to the operation, it was inefficient and added a lot of overhead costs. To solve this, our engineers created a custom script with a command-line interface to automate much of these tasks.
Early 2019, realizing the need for a user interface, I was tasked with designing a native app, called Content Prep Tool – an ancillary product for file handling during the localization process.
Users would need to install this Electron app on their Mac computer and then point to a folder with raw files. The app would analyze its content and process them if necessary. Then, users would need to pick the files they want to turn into localization chapters (since not all files sent were necessary for production). With different methods of reading, one for page-by-page and one for vertical scrolling, different file formats, and approaches to Photoshop layers, you can imagine the complexity of dealing with file processing in our case. All processing was server-sided. The output was processed file packaged in batches to be imported to the existing Localization Tool for translating, typesetting, and proofreading.
I soloed the design of this project. After several rounds of research, ideation, and discussion, I executed the design in Figma, with Material Design as the design system. The product was launched in 2020 and would serve a crucial role in the localization of over 200 titles.
