Improved eBook app for avid readers
SUMMARY
Avid readers want a single library for all of their ebooks (including audiobooks). By providing an easy and exceptional e-reading experience, users will be loyal to Amazon Kindle. However, there are several areas of frustration — particularly with large ebook libraries, that are pushing avid readers to other platforms.
MY ROLE
UX/Product designer, Researcher
TOOLS
TIMELINE
7 Months
TEAM
CLIENT Academic Project
DELIVERABLES User Research, Competitor Analysis, Empathy Mapping, Personas, Wireframes, Prototype, Task Flows
GOAL Update the Amazon Kindle app to better support avid readers.
OUTCOME Researched, designed, and tested solutions to 3 major UX problems in Amazon's iOS Kindle app.
Problem
Users with large libraries containing 100's-1000's of books need features that help them more easily browse and sort their large ebook libraries so they can better plan reading time and have a better awareness of what is currently in their collection.
Research
- 5 users interviews
- 21 academic articles
- Competitor Analysis
Major Findings
Avid readers with large libraries have three major pain points.
Pain Point 1 Browsing
Pain Point 2 Reading 2(+) books in parallel
Pain Point 3 Downloading
Analysis
Avid readers, who actively switch between 2-4 books depending on mood, have 100's or 1000's of books and get frustrated when they can't find a book or remember why they added a book to their library. They want to spend their time reading their books, not sorting them into folders. Readers also have genre-specific needs and preferences that are not being met.
Personas
Travis the Student Traveler
Natasha the Mystery Sleuth
Ideation
Value vs Complexity Matrix, Concept Evaluation
Vision
Primary Goals for Design Phase
- Add support for readers who have several active books that they are switching between depending on mood throughout the day and week.
- Redesign library view to support easier find-ability through sorting, filtering, and additional book metadata.
- Add support for automatically downloading existing and new user content.
Secondary Goals for Design Phase
- Explore a spine-based progress and contents UI to improve memory of book chronology (through increased spacial awareness) and to improve in-book navigation.
- Add support for controlling book and chapter progress indicators at genre and book levels.
User Stories
- As an avid reader I want to switch between multiple active books so that I can read whichever genre I’m currently in the mood for.
- As a traveling reader I want automatically download all of my books so that I can read any book in my library when on an airplane without having to think about which book to download ahead of time.
- As an avid reader with a large ebook library I want better sorting and filtering options so that I can more easily and quickly find books.
Design
Task Flows
Crazy-8 Paper Sketch Concepts
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Home is redesigned to put more focus on the user's books and reading goals. Book suggestions and active books, now located in the Bookshelf, are put in the lower easier-to-tap area. IA is improved to make actions easier-to-find.
Library is updated with automatic genre categories, additional user filtering and sorting options, and quick actions for each book. It is also easier to quickly switch view modes.
In-Book navigation is updated to include the book cover and quick access to the Bookshelf. Navigation items have also been moved to the bottom for easier tapping on modern, tall screen devices. Additional Book Settings are available for progress.
Testing/Validation
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Solutions
[1] Browsing large libraries
Redesigned library view to support easier find-ability by automatically categorizing books, increasing sorting and filtering options, and adding book blurb and time-to-read metadata to book list view.
Automatic Organization
Amazon’s existing book meta-data is used to automatically organize purchases and user content into standardized categories.
Improved Filtering
Additional filter and sort options have been added — including opening a random book.
Book Blurb Added
A description helps remind users what the book is about.
Time-to-Read Added
Added the Time-to-Read (based on each user’s past reading speed).
[2] Reading 2 or more books in parallel
Users are able to switch between active books and plan their next reads in the Bookshelf by creating queues: ordered lists of books around any theme or topic the user wants.
The existing recently read/opened collection on the home screen becomes a smart queue always shown first in the Bookshelf; this smart collection contains books not added to a queue manually.
[3] Downloading large libraries
Readers want access all of their books in offline areas such as airplanes. The existing app offers the option to auto-download only audio books. This can be solved by adding an additional control to automatically download all ebooks.
Additional Improvement AreasI explored three other areas for improvement—open the toggle to learn more.
3 Additional UX Improvement Areas‣
Takeaways
- Academic papers are a great source of knowledge, including learning about potential problem areas to solve, when learning about new industries for design projects.
- Figma is a superior tool, compared to Sketch, for prototyping, collaboration, and developer inspection tools, making it my preferred design tool for future projects.
Future
The next step in this project would be to run usability testing on the high fidelity prototype.
In my ideation phase I generated many additional solutions to user needs beyond the 3 main areas I chose to focus on in this case study. The ones I chose were low complexity and high value: solutions I felt could be implemented quickly and improve the user experience greatly. I would like to develop and test some of my other ideas as I believe there is a lot of untapped potential in the Kindle app.
Appendix
Appendix
Secondary Research
Special thanks to Maya Wagoner for her industry insight
Insights were collected from the following 21 sources; mostly scientific research articles.
View article citation list‣
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