June
This month, I bring you a faster, more reliable Search Engine and a sleek redesign of Series Details.
Last updated
This month, I bring you a faster, more reliable Search Engine and a sleek redesign of Series Details.
Last updated
Welcome to the June 2023 update, packed with exciting new features, just as promised. This month, I'm thrilled to announce not one, but two major additions that I am sure you'll love!
Check out the Changelog for the full list of changes ->
📋ChangelogIntroducing the star of the show - the brand new Series Details page, affectionately dubbed Series Details v2. The previous version was designed with simplicity in mind, mainly for easy link sharing. However, the new version embodies my original vision for the Series Details feature, providing a comprehensive display of all the information you desire about a specific series.
You may have noticed that Reviews and Statistics are currently unavailable, but rest assured, they will be incorporated in future updates. Furthermore, please note that this is not the final iteration of the page. More exciting details, such as authors, artists, characters, and more, will be added in due course. Stay tuned for even more improvements to come!
First and foremost, I'm excited to introduce the new addition of tags. I have carefully curated the initial set of genres and themes, totalling 22 unique tags. As the system continues to grow and evolve, my plan is to continually expand this list. In the future, you can look forward to additional categories such as demographics and story settings being included as well.
One of the most important things is also the accuracy of tags. Currently many series are likely not to be classified correctly, but I have quite a few ideas on how to improve relevancy going forward - including with your help, so watch this space!
The addition of series descriptions has been a much-awaited feature. Implementing this functionality correctly is not easy, which is why its integration has been delayed until now.
Presently, only 10% of all series on Kenmei have accompanying synopses, and it will require some time to fill in the remaining descriptions without jibberish. To address this, I will prioritize populating descriptions for the most popular series first. Rest assured, any new series added to Kenmei moving forward will always include a synopsis.
I appreciate your patience as I work towards gradually expanding and refining the series descriptions, ensuring they are meaningful, as well as, improving your experience in finding new series to read.
Lastly, for series that have tags (which now encompass 91% of all series), you will notice the inclusion of six similar series at the bottom of the page. These recommendations are currently generated based on the combination of genres and themes associated with each series. Consequently, the more genres and themes a series shares, the more relevant the suggestions are likely to be.
I must note that this approach is relatively simplistic, and as a result, you may encounter some less-than-ideal recommendations. Consider this as version 1 of the feature, and rest assured that in the upcoming months, I will diligently refine this functionality to enhance its relevance and accuracy.
One more thing to mention - the mobile version has also been built from scratch, so it now looks like what you'd expect from a high-quality app. All the same information as on the Desktop will be shown but adapted to work nicely on mobile devices.
This has been quite an undertaking -> I've been working on and off on this feature for the past 4 months and I am super excited that it has been rolled out to everyone now. The new search engine is a lot more sophisticated than the previous version, providing a couple of new features and improvements.
First of all, it's much faster. And I mean it -> 3 times faster on average and 2 times faster for the top 5% slowest search requests. Moreover, so far, no search takes longer than ~4s while previously some specific queries might have taken 30 seconds or more. And I know this can get even faster with some infrastructure updates!
When using Quick Search (and soon other places), you will see highlighting for your search query, so you get a better idea as to why a particular result was returned for your search.
Moreover, I will now display the specific title that matched - not just the main title, which again makes it easier to understand why a specific series matched.
Finally and most importantly -> the accuracy of results returned is a lot better now. You might have noticed previously that some series won't show up at all or are much lower on the list. This has been improved across the board, making it easier to find what you are looking for.
Of course, this area will always require improvements - search is not a simple feature and you will still encounter weird or no results for your searches, but it'll only get better with time.
As with the previous month and going forward - here's the overview of the work done for the month of June. I am still trying to get better at shipping more frequently and doing better task estimation, but I am not quite there yet.
While I wanted to do a few things, I am happy to have finished 2 huge features I wanted to focus on -> Series Details v2 and Search Engine v2. As mentioned, there is still a huge backlog of Series Descriptions to fill out, so my work is far from over with that feature.
Now, for "bad" news -> I have plans to take a 2-week vacation in July, so there is a chance I won't be able to ship big features. I plan instead to focus on backfilling data for the series as well as working on lots of minor improvements and bug fixes.
Here's the updated list from last month. I am not yet adding new priorities, as I need to re-evaluate which major features to work on next:
Series Details v2 + Expanding data
Discovery Improvements
Search Engine v2
Importing from MAL, Anilist and more
