Nextbook Mobile App
BrainStation Course Project
Year: 2022
Timeline: 10 weeks
Tools: Figma
Role: Ideation, UX research, Wireframe, UI design, Visual identity
ABOUTObjective
As a certificate course, my goal for this project was to address a current book-finding pain point through a high-fidelity prototype of a social app designed exclusively for the book-reading community. Publishing is an area I have always been interested in as a book lover and publishing program graduate. There are many opportunities to improve readers’ experiences in book finding, sharing, and purchasing. Therefore, the project aims to design a mobile platform where readers, authors, publishers, and other stakeholders can interact with each other, and at the same time share their reading lists and titles with the community.
problemIt’s time-consuming for readers to discover the next book to read or purchase
There are not many platforms that are solely dedicated to the reading community where they can socialize with other people in the community. Readers need to switch between different platforms to get book recommendations, read reviews of titles, and look up the best purchasing options available.
How might we make the book-finding process more straightforward and enjoyable for book lovers?
Where do people discover the book that they read or buy in 2022?
Starting with white paper research, I began to draw from research articles on the related topic of book finding process—the statistic from BookNet shows:
“The most popular way readers discover books is through word of mouth (44%)…Browsing is another highly effective book discovery method: 32% of readers found books while browsing online retailer websites.
WHITE PAPER RESEARCHideateCompetitive analysis
INTERVIEWSNone of the interviewees were browsing in physical stores regularly, instead, they find book recommendations from social media and make purchases online.
Although the research from BookNet was important, I’ve conducted interviews with 6 book lovers who make over 20 books purchase every year. I’ve asked them questions to find out about their book-finding process and the challenges they currently have. I then organized my data through a card sorting exercise to find common themes amongst them.
Connect readers to each other
Make an app in a concise design that is an interactive social media platform for the reading community. Users can follow other readers having similar reading tastes, follow their favorite book publishers, bookstores, authors, illustrators, etc. to see what opinion leaders are reading, and save to their own “to be read” list or make a purchase directly on the app.
Persona
USER FLOW
WIREFRAME
TESTING3 major improvements
Based on various feedback from 7 of my peers + mentor feedback with the low-fi prototype, I continually iterated my design over the span of 4 weeks with 3 major improvements:
DESIGN SYSTEM & STYLE GUIDEThe Final Prototype!
CONCLUSIONTakeaways and what I’d do differently with Nextbook
Design systems, when implemented well, can provide a lot of benefits to a design team. I would like to explore more about material design, design systems (Google, IBM and etc.), and industry standards for my next project, and learn from professionals.
Spend more time on UX research before I dive into the design phase. Though I am very glad about the final deliverables, UX research is going to be a seamless and ongoing process.
