An app for all bookworms, book-jugglers and book-lovers out there…
Users
Let me introduce you to Amantine. She’s a young retiree who loved reading her whole life. But, quite often actually, she tends to forget about the books she’s read. She thinks she’s starting a new one, and after 2 or 3 chapters she suddenly thinks to herself:
Wait a minute… I’ve already read this book!
And then, she feels quite silly, and sometimes even frustrated because she has lost her time re-reading a book she didn’t want to read again. She also feel bad when she doesn’t remember books she used to love. But let’s be clear here, it’s not because of her age or of the massive amount of books she’s read that her memory is a bit blurry. While the majority of readers (50%) reads 2 to 5 books on average per year, they have trouble remembering them: 89%, according to my research, struggle with that problem. We’re humans, we forget stuff. It’s ok but it can be really annoying when you forget books that made you feel strong emotions or made you learn and grow so much.
This is also an issue for Louise. She’s a student, she loves to read, but she also needs to read recommended books for her studies. She tends to accumulate books, reading several at the same time, and she keeps a lengthy Amazon wishlist with all the books she might be interested in.
Amantine and Louise are two very different persons with the same love for books and they also share some needs. Like 96% of the people I surveyed, they both tried to keep track of the books they’ve read or want to start keeping track. They also go online to find new books or to read some reviews (like 58% of people surveyed). Louise uses multiple solutions to keep track of her books:
I use a notebook, or a piece of paper, sometimes I take pictures of the covers, I may have a list on my phone, oh and my Amazon wishlist too…
She also used apps like Goodreads and Babelio for that purpose but she gave up because of the overwhelming and often useless features, in her opinion, that were added. Amantine is also very confused by the UI of these apps and websites, and even if she uses them for reading reviews, she doesn’t feel like creating an account, it’s too close to a social network for her.
Design Opportunities
During the interviews, managing books collections as well as a clear UI were the most wanted characteristics. They also expressed the desire to be able to save and even share quotes from the books, because they struggle with that. This is also an opportunity to make the thrill of reading last in time. And the ideas of “exploring” and “surprise” came several times. Because maintaining a reading list can be a boring task, if not tedious, and they miss the feeling of excitement they have when entering a bookstore. There is an opportunity to create a more complete and fulfilling experience.
Let’s recap the problems:
✏️ They don’t remember books they’ve read or would like to read.
✏️ They’re using several app, websites and various lists. There is an opportunity to make it easier. All in one place.
✏️ Keeping track of the books and keeping quotes: a tedious process. But it really should be a quick and simple task.
After working on the quantitative and qualitative data, and creating the affinity diagram, user personae, user journey, problem statement, mind-map and Moscow diagram (lots of UX methods!), I came up with these solutions for BookLovr:
✏️ Remembering books: It’s a reading journal, you can add notes, rate your book, search for another one…
✏️ Organization: You can create your own lists (or “shelves”).
✏️ Quick & Easy-to-use: You can scan everything within the app (ISBN, cover, text).
✏️ Saving and sharing your thrill: You can save, create, export quotes.
✏️ Centralized: In the same app, you can find new books while keeping track of the old ones.
✏️ Exploration, surprise: Do you fancy a date with a book? This special “match-making” feature gives you the opportunity to have a 1-on-1 with a book (based on your previous reading and interests). Because, let’s face it, we do judge a book by its cover, especially when looking for new books. Louise has in her phone many pictures of books she took at the bookstore just because they had a nice cover and looked interesting to her. This feature makes the whole reading journal experience more exciting because you have the surprise to meet new books in a different and more interactive way.
It’s a swiping feature, that appeals to all generations. Louise will understand the reference to the famous match-making app, and Amantine will appreciate the swiping gesture (during my usability testing, I’ve noticed that older users found it way easier to swipe than to tap or slide with the thumb). Both will be able to focus on one book at a time, instead of having an almost overwhelming choice of recommended books, like in a regular exploration mode.
Business Opportunities
On a business side, the last feature creates a higher time-in-app. We can also expect engagement and increase in books sales, through a CTA button for a Purchase section with affiliated links to Amazon and partnering local bookstores. There are also many opportunities to develop partnerships with publishing houses and books events.
And by the way, if you’re wondering where the heck is the E-reader feature that connects the app to your Kindle or Kobo, it’s not here… Simply because it’s still not the end of books as we know it, and e-books haven’t exactly penetrated the market as expected yet. 73% of people surveyed don’t own an E-reader, and people who do tend to use it for reading only… No note-taking, no searching, no Facebook or Twitter linking… So this feature could be nice to have but it’s not currently a priority. And you can still add easily your e-books and even audiobooks on the app, because they also have an ISBN number.
Wireframes
This is an app is for everyone. So I couldn’t go all the way into the match-making reference, even if it could have been fun to do as a designer. Maybe for another app focusing on younger generations… So making it usable and nice for all ages was definitely a challenge. I constantly asked myself how the non-digital-natives could react to this element or this gesture. That’s why at almost every step of the process, I’ve done usability testing with different people, from 23 to 75 years old. And making sure the navigation system was understandable enough was also a challenge (especially when categorizing the books). Without much surprise, my first mid-fi wireframes are very different from the final prototype.
I’ve came up with three main user flows and decided to design the two most important. (I had less than a week to work on them). I also focused on an Android app, and I tried to stay consistent with the Material Design guidelines. To be honest, shadows are really tricky to manage. I learnt a lot but I still have to practice them, especially when following these guidelines. Also, when I had to import my prototype from Sketch to Invision Studio (to make the animations), the shadows were suddenly all messed up. I hope Invision Studio will get better (no “spread” feature yet…).
Moodboard
I had fivebrand attributes in mind when starting thinking about the moodboard: friendly, organized, exciting, helpful, authentic. And I also learnt during my interviews that people tend to read more when on holiday, and if when they read after a long day at work or on their commute, they want to get distracted, be in their own bubble, and have a break from the rest of the world, like a small vacation, where new adventures and figurative travels start. So my moodboard conveys these feelings of holiday, having a break, exploring and going on an adventure, but in a calm and safe place.
Style Guide
After testing and validating my moodboard, I started working on the style guide. I used tone down colors picked from my moodboard as primary and secondary colors. The accent colors are also tone down. And the black and white aren’t totally black and white. The serif font is just for display text, that way the app is easy to read, even for older users. I chose some simple, friendly illustrations. And I used a Photoshop mock-up to create a hardcover style on the images of the books, to make it more consistent. (Because this app is going to show many pictures of books, I don’t want them to be all different and give a messy vibe).
Animations
I really enjoyed working on the five main animations, using Invision Studio. It was my first time creating a swiping animation and I had a blast learning how to do it. Of course here again I tested all the micro-interactions with my older users, to make sure it was easy to use.
Final Prototype
You can have a glimpse at the final prototype here:
There are two flows. On the first one, Amantine is for the first time entering two books she has read and the flow starts on the empty state of the Library. On the second one, which starts on the Library a few weeks later, she is updating the status of a book she has finished reading and she is looking for a new one in the Explore menu.
