Onebooks
All in one reading app
WHAT IS ONEBOOKS?
Onebooks is an all-in-one platform that offers huge ranges of e-books and audiobooks with just a few clicks away. Onebooks helps users to find and access on-demand e-books and audiobooks easily, without the hassle of looking for them one by one. Unlike other book reading platforms, Onebooks promotes friends features to encourage users to maintain or improve their reading habits.
ROLE
UI/UX designer, visual designer, UX researcher
DURATION
3 months (May - August 2021)
TOOLS USED
Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator
What’s the problem?
As a frequent reader, I used to read a lot of books. But as time went by, I realized that I do not read as much as I used to do and as much as I wish to do, which turns out also happens to my friends. It got me to realize the trend of problems that readers are facing:
People start to leave their reading behavior as they grow older
Nevertheless, many people realize that reading books has a lot of benefits. However, fewer and fewer people read nowadays, due to various reasons, such as lack of time to do so, or easy access to information other than books.
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After talking randomly to more people, it leads me to a hypothesis that:
A tool that gives easy access to reading books will increase people's awareness of reading books and capture those markets of people who used to read.
What is the goal of the study?
Then the goal of this study is to
Build a platform that can encourage people to revisit their habit of reading books.
I. RESEARCH
Validating hypothesis
WHITE PAPER RESEARCH
Before talking to users, I went online to find out why people like to read books and why people start to read books. I looked through different community platforms such as Reddit, Quora, etc; where people exchanged their points of view regarding this topic. The results that I found stated that:
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People like to read books because:
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Knowledge, inspiration, and motivation
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Escaping from reality
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Entertainment
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Feeling that they are not alone
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What prevents them from reading books:
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Lazy
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Do not find the books that interest them
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Commitment (you have to focus your sight and mind to read books and cannot do other things)
VALIDATING USER PROBLEMS
I might have assumptions regarding what problems current readers are experiencing based on my own story. However, how did I know that these problems that I faced were the real problems the majority of users were facing? After all, I might not represent the whole population of my target users. There was only one way to find out: user interviews.
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I conducted remote interviews with 7 people, who were or are frequent readers. I’ve asked questions about:
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Their life habits, including understanding what they usually do, and what they use in daily habits
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Their reading habits, including when, where, why, and how they usually read books
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Their journey in reading books. What are the steps required before reading books
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What they like or dislike about reading, including their motivations of reading books
By using affinity mapping, I tried to categorize my results finding to find some patterns from the interviews. Here are some of the main findings from the interviews:
Time is valuable since people are generally busy
People are aware of the benefits of reading, and they have a desire to read more if they can
E-books are more famous among readers because they are more efficient and less expensive
Having friends with the same interests helps to motivate readers to read books
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I took a look at a few other book provider mobile apps that more or less solve the same problem as what I am trying to solve. I focus on discovering what are their strengths and weaknesses, and what are their main features that help to solve the problems that readers are facing, allowing me to uncover what gap in the current market that Onebooks can possibly fill.
IBOOKS
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The reading page can be adjusted
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Can set reading goals
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Support audiobooks
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Can create different folders to store different types of books
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
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Doesn't have many selections of books
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Doesn't offer many categories and books genre
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Hard to find the desired genre
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Sometimes it takes a long time to load the books
GOODREADS
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Can give a recommendation of books
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Can give review to books and see others' reviews
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Can track reading challenge
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Contains all book details at the app
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Can directly scan and take photo of the books
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
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You cannot read the books inside the app
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You have to manually update the progress of reading the books
WATTPAD
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Free access to a lot of books
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Give recommendations for the users
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Offer chat features
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Public reading lists
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Have filter functions
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Showcase how many times the books are read and how many likes are given to the books
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Can comment at any part of the story
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
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Some books are now paid
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Does not have books from famous writers, and other famous books
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Can only read maximum of 2 books offline
BASMO
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Does not have to register first to use the app
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Can input goals and track the yearly goals
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Can write a summary of the books read and gives emoticon and feelings after reading a certain part of the books
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
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To access the full version of the app has to pay
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There is no summary of synopsis and reviews of the book in the app
OVERDRIVE
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Has a lot of selections of books
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Easy to find books
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Everything is a push-in effect, making it easier to do things without needing to change page
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Support audiobooks
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
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Need to sign in first before using the app and the sign-in requires a lot of processes and forms to be filled in
Requires access to the library to borrow the books
II. DEFINE
Defining Onebooks’ target users
As we know, Onebooks is mainly targeted at current or former readers, aiming to promote and help them to maintain or revisit their reading habits. After conducting the interview, I detailed the characteristics, motives, and needs of the target users into one persona.
The journey to self-fulfilment by reading books
To better visualize the experience to build empathy for the main target users while trying to accomplish a task, I created the journey maps below.
Potential design opportunities
After understanding more about the users, I noticed some of the design opportunities I can achieve:
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HMW help Felisha to find books to read based on her interest?
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HMW provide easy access to books that Felisha might get interested in?
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HMW help Felisha to find friends with the same interest as her?
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HMW make Felisha feel productive by reading while not wasting too much of her time?
III. IDEATE
Defining the problems to focus on
After defining the HMW statements that Felisha has, I decided to choose 2 of all the statements that I wanted to focus on:
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HMW help Felisha to find friends with the same interest as her?
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HMW make Felisha feel productive by reading while not wasting too much of her time?
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The decision was taken by measuring the impact of solving these problems to maintain the reading habit of the users, which were based on the profile of the targets users.
Brainstorming ideas
To answer the HMW statements, I brainstormed ideas on the key features that the solution should include. At this point, I generated as many ideas as possible, and I arranged them in an effort vs impact matrix. Then, I chose some of the best ideas that have great impacts but require less effort. Here are the main features I decided to develop
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Accurate book recommendation – readers can get accurate recommendations of books based on their chosen genre, past books that they read, authors that they like, books that their friends read, etc.
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Simultaneous reading with friends – readers could invite their friends to read books together on one platform and they can discuss the books using the chat feature in the book
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Detailed rating and reviews from past readers – readers could see the reviews and ratings that past readers give to particular books to help users to find the best books that they want to read.
IV. PROTOTYPE
Design the seamless solutions
At this point, it’s time to get my hand dirty by sketching and wireframing. I first focused on features that are more important and worked my way down the list of priorities.
V. VALIDATE
Evaluate design solutions
I’ve come this far, but it’s not the time for me to stop. Not before I conducted any user testing to validate whether my design solutions solved their problems. I conducted user testing with total participants of 6 people.
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Here are 2 scenarios that I gave to the participants.
KEY INSIGHTS
The “Simultaneous reading” feature in the app is not visible to the users
The audiobooks page is a bit confusing
The purpose of rating books and movies in the preliminary questions is unclear
“Wait, I don’t know that it has these features. I think I would never know if you don’t tell me”
“So if I want to read in audiobooks, where should I search the book? On the audiobooks page on the home page?"
“I’m not sure what rating movies for. I thought this app provides movies as well”
Based on the feedback received, I started to make changes to our site.
ITERATIONS
01
Building awareness on the Simultaneous Reading Features
To solve the first problem, I tried to address it by providing an additional step after the users press the "read" button, giving them a choice to read alone or with their friends. It helps to acknowledge users about the feature.
Before
After
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Improving the informational architecture by removing uneccessary section
To solve the second problem, I changed the informational architecture of the app by combining the "audiobooks" and the "home" page into a page called "discover", which stores both audio and e-books. It helps to focus the users to one page when finding books to read.
Before
After
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Building awareness of the purpose of preliminary questions
For this problem, I tried to change the layout of the page to emphasize the explanations and use different font weights to accentuate the purpose of asking the users to rate movies in the preliminary questions.
Before
After
Other iterations
Other iterations for the preliminary questions pages were also made. The first one is I added a progress bar at top of the pages to give reassurance and prediction of how many the preliminary questions are.
Moreover, for the genre pages, I added a dropdown icon to allow the users to minimize and maximize the choices of the genre. I also reduce the size of the boxes to reduce the overall time taken for users to scroll through the pages.
Moreover, I moved the library page to the first page that the users will see when they open the app. Moreover, I also showcase the users' reading goals since this is the thing that users want to see while opening the app. I also made some changes to the tab by increasing the touchpoints so the users would not miss click them.
It’s time for colors and images!
Now that I’ve done all the bones of the app, it’s time for me to incorporate images, icons, illustrations, and colors. First, I start to conduct some research on the colors and font style that I want to use in my images. Then, I decided to use some illustrations to have a playful feeling for some key points of interactions. The following are the style guide that I used.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Now it’s time to see the magic!
After I’ve done wireframing, testing, and defining the brand materials, it’s time to prototype! Here are the details of the final product:
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Answers some questions and we’ll recommend you the best books that suit your interest!
Before jumping right into the app, the users have to answer some preliminary questions: preferred genre and authors, books read, and movies watched. It will help the app to discover the user’s preferences and find the book they most likely will like.
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You want to read books with your friend, but don’t know how? We got it covered!
From the interview, users' main motivation to read books is by having a friend to discuss the books with. This app allows users to invite their friends to read the same book together and discuss the content of the books within the chat features provided.
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Done reading books and hungry for more? We’ll give you book recommendations right away!
Finding the right book is one of the most important points for readers. It can be one of the motivations or stumbling blocks for people to read. Hence, our app tries to personalize the book recommendation that we give to the users by considering all the information that the users give initially and the books that the readers read in the app.
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Connect with people alike, and take a peek at their recipes of happiness!
The app allows you to connect with your friends from all over the world, or follow your favorite book lovers and authors, and take a look at their bookshelves to find the next book that you want to read.
MOVING FORWARD
What should I do next?
Now that I’ve done designing the whole experience and interfaces for Onebooks, it’s time to find out what would I do next. Well, I realize that this app is still far from perfect, and there’s always some improvements that I can do. Hence, moving forwards, here are several things I can do:
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Conduct research and testings with more users to validate whether my solutions successfully solve the problems that the users have and to realign needs, motivations and desires
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Continue to refine and improve the simultaneous reading features
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Research, design and test additional features that will help users to read more
What did I learn?
Moreover, I believe that in every activity that I do, there’s always something that I can learn. Similarly, this experience has taught me a lot of things which include:
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Research is a never-ending process. There are so much to uncover from a users’ point of view and hence, they should be included from the start to the end of the development process.
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There’s a lot of users’ points of views and it’s easy to get distracted by the users’ proposed solutions. Hence, it is important to focus and always keep the main problems we’re trying to solve in mind.
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Take baby steps instead of huge, giants steps. There are a lot of ideas I have to incorporate into the app, however, I learned the importance of taking baby steps by focusing on most valuable product that should be prioritized.