UX, Feature Development
How might we create a place for reading books together online?
In an age of quarantine and coronavirus, reading has suddenly become something people have time for. In some cases, buckets of time. Not only is it enjoyable, but it is ever more important that people inform themselves through well thought and researched books rather than the attention grabbing, quick headlines so available today. However, as there is an uptick in reading, there are increased challenges placed on people and members of bookclubs on where and how to discuss the books they are reading, and share their thoughts and feelings. How do they conduct these book club sessions anymore? On zoom, certainly, but what happens to the lively conversation, the references to passages, and the side conversations that emerge so naturally in an in-person setting? How do they coordinate who to include in their bookclub or when to meet? And for the book lover who reads on their own, how do they discover other people who have read the same book? How do they find people to discuss their thoughts if they have not found a bookclub setting?
We came to the question of social reading in this particular climate of social distancing, and realized that there was a problem that readers had no dedicated virtual space to read and discuss together.
The Team
In social-distance mode ourselves, over Zoom, a team of four of us embarked on a journey to investigate how people were reading, why, what and when and test our assumptions about a need for a virtual space to read and discuss with others.
Myself, Amanda Picone, DJ Wooster, and Jackie Han organized into research and design sprints. Amanda, Jackie and I took on the research relay. DJ and Jackie took on the wireframing and high fidelity designs, and we would all come together to sythesize data, workshop ideas, and iterate on ideas.
After a quick initial investigation into the state of e-readers out there, we decided to focus on Kindle. It is one of the most popular ereaders out there, and interestingly enough, although thier Kindle device did well for years, its on the decline, and people are choosing to use the Kindle app on their phones and tablets instead. Once we focused on Kindle, a problem we had not set out to test emerged. There appeared to be huge gaps between the tasks needed to buy, download, and read a book, not to mention review and recommend one.
The Kindle app (in the middle) is ONLY for reading books. It neither gives a user reviews or recommendations of titles, nor most shockingly, lets you purchase them in-app. Instead, the user must go to amazon.com to find the ebook, and purchase there, and then download it to their Kindle app. Lastly, if the user wants to browse titles, read reviews, and see recommendations based on past reads, they must go to an altogether seperate app called "goodreads"(pictured on the right above) to access an array of reviews and title recommendations. This process to simply find one title, purchase, and read seemed like a trecherous path filled with gaps, and numerous opportunities to simply quit. We set out after discovering this, to investigate if these seperate platforms were indeed a pain point for Kindle users.
As seen above in a map version is our process in trying to figure out how to simply buy an ebook in order to read one book. The major disconnects between the searching for a title, purchasing that title, and reading it, led straight from the excitment and novely of reading a ebook and its convinience, straight into confusion and fatigue from switching back and forth between three seperate apps. By the end when we finally figured out how to buy and download and then open the book, there was no way we ever would have wanted to get back on goodreads in order to recommend it or intereact with any other readers.
Now we just had to test out our two major assumptions- that there was no dedicated space for readers to discuss and share recommendations efficintely online (although goodreads does offer recommendations, its so out of sync with the actual reading experience, and has such limited social media features, we proceeded with this assumption). and secondly, that the kindle process itself presented major hurdles against simply using the Kindle to read a book.
User Interviews
Do you read on a Kindle? Likes? Dislikes?
If you are in a book club, what are some pros and cons?
What are frustrations you’ve experienced in a book club?
Do you talk to people about reading? How do you make recommendations or find out what to read next?
When discussing a book in book club, how do you refer to individual passages or pages?
Affinity Map
“Reading is about sharing.” -Findlay
“I think the most important thing in a book clubs isnt the content, its the style of reading and analysis.”- Carmen
“My biggest problem with kindle is that theres no way for us to send send passages and annotations to eachother” -Findlay
“I went to the bookclub 50% for social interaction and 50% for the actual intellectual engagement.”-Carmen
“what's made my book club successful over 20 years is the fact that there is less for my book club to do. ” - Maureen, Librarian
“The New Yorker short stories are the perfect length for me. Ive never found anyone to read those with me or discuss them. ” -Robert
“Id just love to see more easily what my friends are reading, and be able to connect to them easily about it, so maybe we can start discussions about the book.” -Findlay
“I would love to be like, Kindle Friends with someone. And then id love to see what theyre reading or what they highlighted. oh my god, that would be amazing.”-Findlay
“at a juicy part of the book you're like, Oh, I can't wait to talk about it with other people, you know” -Amanda Petry
User Personas
Comparative Analysis
Meetup.com
Slack
Design Studio- 8 Wireframes in 8 minutes
Wireframes
Social Reading Problems:
No dedicated Social Media Site for Readers. Little to no online support for Organizing and Moderating book club, Difficult to find a book club that matches your preferred discussion style
Kindle Problems:
Separated purchasing, reviewing, and reading capabilities on Kindle. No way of reading together on the same text virtually. No way of sharing passages in detail with friends and family
One Place for All Things Reading
Entirely New Social Media and Organizational Support Features:
A way of managing and organizing book clubs.
Guidelines for moderating book club sessions.
A Zoom integration feature.
A social media platform.
A live annotation feature
Next Steps
Build out the full capabilities of the App:
Profile Pages
Discussion Boards and Channels
Voting for Next Reads in Book Club
Book Club Matchup Quiz
Test on Book Clubs and Readers!