Challenges

1. Saturated market: Books have taken many forms since its invention centuries ago. Differentiating my product will require good research.

2. Time limitations: This project was constrained to six days from start to finish.

OUTCOMES

1. Learnt UX methodologies: This project allowed me to learn the nuances of user experience in digital contexts.

2. Practice Figma: Being fluent with the Adobe Creative Suite, I challenged myself to get familiar with a new software.

PROBLEM

“Read more” is a common new year’s resolution. But how is “more” defined? What titles does one read? Does the medium matter? One means of effective goal keeping is accountability. How would a social experience of reading affect motivation to read? Would other persons be required or is an app enough? Are book clubs too old-school?

Without planning and tracking, good intentions remain simply as intentions. Perhaps at best, the goal is met half-heartedly.

RESEARCH

To guide and standardize my user interviews, I created a discussion guide including questions like:

1. What motivates you to read for personal enrichment?

2. Tell me about your last book club experience. [If not applicable: Tell me about your impression of a book club.]

3. Why did you join that book club? [If not applicable: What would compiles (or restrains) you from joining a book club?]

User interviews and affinity mapping revealed:

• Reading is both personal and relational. People use it for personal enrichment, as much as relational fodder for conversation and bonding.

• Reading consistently as an adult is tough because of competing priorities.

• Several people reported negative book club experiences that they associated with “pressurized reading”, “homework”, “socializing without actually discussing the book”.

• Print readers are more likely to convert to a digital experience if it’s an enhanced (feature rich) version of the physical experience.

These insights led to two primary personas –– the Social Reader and the Busy Learner.

Through a competitive analysis of other apps, I learnt:

• Audiobook/ebook apps allow you to purchase but don’t help you actually read the books.

• Book club apps help you schedule gatherings but don’t allow you to purchase book.

DESIGN

With these insights, I sketched a user flow and some wireframes. Through feature prioritization, I ended up with the following features for my minimum viable product.

• Set measurable and time bound reading goals

• View, comment, and post to network/feed

• Buy audiobooks

• Listen to audiobooks

After creating a simple branding system, I digitized my concepts. With my initial prototypes, I conducted usability tests. These tests revealed that while my brand tone was on target, my user interface was not as intuitive as I thought.

Next Steps

Six days is not enough to take on a technology (printed books) that’s been around for centuries and evolved a lot since its invention.

Booked is not really about books per se, but about the way busy adults continue to learn outside of a structured environment. Bringing this app to market will require more research and insight into broader adult learning trends and potential brand partnerships.

Process

After being asked to tackle a redesigned grant recommendation form, I spent time listening in detail to the felt needs of a senior grant officer. We realized we weren’t on the same page with our definitions, and needed to better understand how the current one looks how it does today.

Through video call, we went through each iteration of the recommendation form. Since the senior grant officer had created some of these iterations, we were able to talk through the decision making process and how the board members responded to them. This acted as a proxy for the absence of the board members feedback.

We realized grant officers employed a scorecard of six measures in each of their grant assessments, yet this was not visually reflected in the final recommendation.

Because the scoring process was opaque, board members often disagreed with the final organization scores at board meetings. This led to process inefficiencies and miscommunication.

With this key insight, I included the grant scorecard in my initial drafts of the updated recommendation form. Other grant officers expressed concern about the increased scrutiny “showing our homework” might bring. This led to rich discussions about our grant process and communication with the board.

Including the grant scorecard in the updated recommendation form brought board members greater clarity, leading to a request to further develop other such matrices for the grant process.

Process

Since I was the one most familiar with user research on our team, I worked with our summer intern to lay out a simple user journey map listing all stakeholders, processes, and tools. I gave him some sample journey maps for reference and explained how we might create a tool to invite each stakeholder to offer their insights. We went with a low fidelity prototype (hand-drawn and photocopied) to achieve this goal.

With our first prototype in hand, we set up individual time slots to hear from grant officers and administers. We offered gummy bears to help interviewees mentally transition into a more relaxed mood. We asked each person to share their perspective of the grant process by marking up the chart. We documented any comments and insights that came up with a sticky note.

Once we talked to all our interviewees, we laid out all their maps together and our team of three synthesized the parts to form a final map representing the variety of perspectives on the grant process. I then digitalized the map.

Through this project, the new grant portal was developed to include permissions for relevant stakeholders (like administration and finance), rather than just the grant officers. This increased process efficiency and communication.

Challenges

1. Open-ended brief: Throughout the process, we designed tools to elicit unconscious desires and responded flexibly to changing needs and circumstances.

2. Genuinely working with people with varied life experiences: Throughout the process, each participant had to face their bias in access to resources, structural racism, and America’s criminal legal system.

Outcomes

1. Tailored cafe spaces for each learning community: WHEELS and Fortune set up spaces on their campuses giving faculty, staff, and students a convenient, low-cost environment, where they can relax and reconnect.

2. New ways of working with others: Each participant learnt the value of working with, not against, a diversity of individual experiences in order to gain a more equitable whole.