Collaborative Story Workshop
Design a writing community where authors can publish a draft, request focused feedback, and accept changes without losing ownership.
The brief
Understand the problem
Background
Writers need different kinds of feedback at different stages. Open editing can blur authorship, overwrite voice, and invite unsolicited rewrites instead of useful critique.
User context
Celeste has a short story draft and wants feedback on pacing, not grammar. She invites a six-person workshop and plans to review suggestions after the weekend.
Product problem
The workspace must preserve the author's canonical draft, direct reviewers to the requested focus, and distinguish comments from proposed edits.
Objective
Create draft publishing, scoped review, suggestion comparison, and author-controlled revision.
What to design
Define the experience
Required experience
- Draft and feedback-goal setup
- Focused reading and comments
- Suggested change review
- Version publication
Screens and states
- Writer dashboard
- Review setup
- Reader view
- Suggestion comparison
- Version history
Core user flow
Follow the critical path
- 01
Celeste uploads a draft and selects pacing feedback
- 02
Reviewers annotate scenes
- 03
She groups similar comments
- 04
She accepts selected changes into a new version while preserving the original
Product rules
Requirements and constraints
Requirements
- Keep authorship and rights visible
- Let the author define feedback scope
- Separate comment, suggestion, and direct edit permissions
- Preserve version history
- Support private and public sharing
Constraints
- Drafts may be unpublished copyrighted work
- Reviewers join across time zones
- Long documents must remain readable on tablets
Reality check
States worth considering
Ready-to-use content
Mock data
Use this content to test hierarchy and realistic data states. You can expand it when the concept needs more depth.
Workshop status
- Draft: The Last Tram, version 3
- Feedback focus: pacing in scenes 4 to 7
- Reviewers: 4 of 6 complete
- Open comments: 18
- Suggested edits: 7
Finish line
What to deliver
- Five desktop or tablet screens
- A comparison view for conflicting suggestions
If you want more
Optional extensions
Optional direction
Visual resources
Use these as a starting constraint if you want one. They are not part of the required solution.