Skills: User research, Competitor analysis, User flows, Wireframes, Low and High fidelity designs, Prototype, UX and UI design, User personas, User journey map, Usability test.
Team: Myself
As an occasional user, I find the app frustrating because it lacks a feature to help track and find books. In addition, the interface is cluttered and old fashioned.
I conducted a quantitative survey using Google forms, which gained 11 responses which has given me an understanding on how they use the app and what they do with it. I thought about how to word my questions by being inclusive, diverse, and unbiased with open questions. Research assumptions:
Several questions were answered by people who I gave the Google forms to, to fill in.
"Having a dark mode option would be great. Also I have noticed the app freezes after scanning the barcode of a book, I have to force close it and reopen it to have it work or type the name in manually. Can we also be able to search by username or email to follow someone like apple users of the app can do. Update, home page keeps giving error message saying its unable to load."
"This app is so backwards and buggy for being owned by Amazon (their other one, Zappos, has similar criticisms from me). How is it 2022 and one of the largest apps doesn't have dark mode yet??? My eyes!! Maybe it's just Android that is lacking in features and reproducibility. The experience is never consistent (e.g. sometimes it shows dates)."
"I get lost on the app. No tutorials how to use. Not easy to go back.""The interface is ugly, and is no longer user friendly or accessible."
"It's got some pretty big software and UI issues. Adding friends for example is embarrassingly hard. Looking up profiles, seeing what my own profile name is so I can tell people how to friend me is so confusing."
"While the website is great, the Android app is annoyingly buggy. For months now, I've been unable to sort my "read books" by date started or finished. This is because the entered dates don't show up as having been entered--except when you go into the area where you enter them. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app, but it didn't help."
"It's frustrating! I hit the wrong buttons when I'm in the middle of typing. When I move back to it, text disappears and goes to a new page wiping my review. It should prompt when I'm in the middle of writing a review if it wants to load to a different page so my text isn't lost. I assume the app isn't developed anymore..."
"I love this app! However, it would be so much better if it had the functionality to mark books as being re-read. It's unfortunate that if I want to re-read a favorite classic, it doesn't leave it in the Read pile and erases the record of it having been read before. It's very frustrating. Also, there needs to be an option for audiobooks. Goodreads is owned by Amazon but I can't add most of my audible books to my list to differentiate paper copies from audiobooks? Again, very frustrating."
"I used to like this app to keep track of where I left off on a book (since I tend to take long pauses between sections) placing notes along my currently reading feed. All of a sudden, the feed began getting periodically wiped and what page I left on along with the notes to remind myself of the previous sections I read disappeared completely. It's still fine to track what books you read and want to read, just use a regular notebook or a note application to keep currently-in-progress book notes."
"As others have said, it's just plain buggy. I've always found the app lacking compared to the site, but now functionality is making it useless. I'm currently stuck in a loop where I foolishly tried to add a book to my "currently reading" section, but it won't let me update progress because it's glitching and showing up in the "read" section. Also, the inability to select the version of the book you're reading (Kindle, Hardcover, etc) from the app is a stupid limitation."
Jayesh Najeeb is a IT Consultant who needs an updated and attractive book app because he wants track and recommend books to his colleagues.
Melba Jeanine is a Liason Officer who needs a reliable, functional and user friendly book app because she wants to add books from the same series to her list of books to read after she updates her progress so she can move onto her next book.
Dark mode:
There is not an option to turn the app screen dark which is not accessible for all users with vision disabilities.
User interface:
The design is old fashioned, the colours are dull, and it causes unexpected problems making it very slow.
Add friend:
Users don't know how to to find profiles, and how to view their own profile to let people know their username.
Tracking:
Users are stuck in a loop (doing the same action) when they add a book to their current reading section.
I have put together two user personas highlighting their biography, goals, and frustrations:
Melba's (1.) and Jayesh's user map journey in order (2.) above.
After collecting surveys and interviews from the users, I have moved forward to compare Goodreads with other book apps to gain insights, particularly the advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
All three competitors have the same features; however, most books are available in several languages on LibraryThing and zlibrary. Dark theme works only if the computer, tablet, and mobile system setting is set to auto daylight. This means when it is evening or sunset, the system automatically detects the light and dark theme. There is an option to take a tour on LibraryThing whether the user is new or not. The apps are user friendly, accessible, has easier search function with more features, appropriate recommendations based on what the user has read, but for Blinkist, it is a premium service that summarises the books into 15 mins.
Disadvantages:
I found that z-library is illegal which is why they have most books available, sponsored by users and donations to keep the contribution running. Librarythings has a difficult search function as it doesn’t match the web/desktop version since it is aimed specially to catalogue instead of saving to the read list on the app. In addition, their mobile web version is not responsive. Blinkist separates itself from being free. It requires the users to sign up, add their payment details in order to use the trial version to activate their premium service.
I started by drawing the wireframes for each screen keeping in mind of improving and modernising the user interface as well as experience.
These are the design concepts based on the problem statements.
I am currently working on the user flow.
I used the paper wireframes as my reference to put together the low-fi or digital wireframes together in Figma.
I conducted a usability testing to see how the users use the improved app and compared the user experience to the current app. We have concluded some findings for improvement to allow the user to continue to move forward in each action they select.
Before usability test:
Users mentioned to add a title to the update progress book section to match that specific section.
After usability test:
Before usability test:
Users noticed in other apps that their search history remains in the search list and questioned why it is empty after they used the search function on this app.
After usability test:
Before usability test:
Users requested for items to automatically appear as they type the author, friend or book name including the image that goes with it. This saves them time from typing the whole name.
After usability test:
After the usability testing, I had the opportunity to improve and update some functions. Here is the high fidelity prototype that my users tried in light and dark mode: figma prototype
Prototype set up overview.
Impact:
Most of the users were positive and pleased about the new user interface design I had put together which included dark theme. The book tracking is simplified and filtered making the search experience fun, and easy to follow.In terms of the add friend feature, this would require development collaboration on the backend as I would have to handover the design and work closely with them
What I learned:
I had the opportunity to learn, empathise, and understand the users’ frustrations about the app. I thought about how can I find solutions to these problems as all of the users had several problems for different features. I focused on the specific issue instead of tackling other problems. There were two common issues in all comments users have said which led me to move forward with them. I had the chance to create a small design system to support brand consistency, and space elements out appropriately.