Step 1

OBSERVE

User Interviews

To start the process I interviewed some (7) co-workers and friends who are book readers. Interviewing them allowed me to notice some important patterns. I talked about their behaviour while reading digital books and what they expect as gratification, if at all. The purpose was to understand their goals, needs, usage, motivations and pain points.

User: People aging 20–40 years old, who are tech savvy and use mobile/ kindle or any other reading device/ app.

Here are some key takeaways from the user interviews:

Why they use a device to read:

• 1. They want to read reviews before buying the book or browse through the discussions to find out if they would like the book or not.
• 2. They don’t have to read it right away — it will always be there on their device which is 24/7 with them.
• 3. One is not required to carry a physical book and its more convenient to the readers.
• 4. They want to feel better about themselves.

Reading time: Most read while travelling, during oce hours, in the restroom, when they are bored, and before they sleep at night.

Rewards: Extensive rewards/gratification to users while they use apps, has led to increased expectations of rewards by the users, like when they shop, travel, buy grocery they get points which can be used on either core app or get third party benefits

User Challenges

Challenge #1: Trigger & Reading Time

• - Most of the participants said they need a reason to read, also they feel less encouraged to read digital books due to factors like user experience, attraction towards physical books and lack of motivation.
• - Some of participants do not read because of time constraints, so they want to understand time take to read a book or a chapter.

Challenge #2: Engagement

• - Finding the right time to pick up from the last read, is one challenge for the casual readers. Hence, they want an innovation of sorts that persuades/ motivates them to read, thus leading to higher engagement levels.

Pain Points #3: Rewards

• - There are no apps that provide rewards/ benefit programs. Users not only want reward programs but they want the programs to be flexible enough to use the points on e-commerce platforms, for example.

Persona

Basis the interviews, I created two user personas of potential mobile application users.

Engaged readers : These readers are very clear about their preference and needs. They will have genres defined as an interest. They would not buy a book before reading summary or reviews.

Casual readers : The most common type of book reader, the reader reads only what other people are reading.

I decided to focus on designing for “Casual User” because most of the participants I interviewed seem to fall in that type of Persona.

Casual reader user persona

Step 2

DEFINE

Hypothesis

I formulated the following hypotheses based on the research and my thoughts, beliefs and human behaviour.

Hypothesis #1: Read along feature

People always like to share things, ideas, perspectives with a story and direction. This has been seen in OTT platforms like Netflix or in fleet business like cab sharing.

My hypothesis is by adding “Read Along” which is a social reading feature that allows users to read books with friends and like minded people from around the world, the engagement and interest level of "Casual Readers" will increase significantly. Read Along will also incentivize users by awarding them Bookify points which can be redeemed across various e-commerce platforms. A notification will be sent to them to trigger users to read by knowing their friend has reached ahead of them.

Hypothesis #2: Multiple ways to earn points

Most of the apps do not have a proper rewards program, a user is only incentivized when they purchase a book.

My hypothesis is, by giving them dierent ways to earn and redeem points, would motivate users to stay on application for a longer duration and browse books, explore oers on dierent categories and discounts on books which they can avail by redeeming mentioned points.

• - Read Along
• - Play Quiz
• - Refer
• - Read to visually impaired people (welfare of the disabled)
• - Donate physical books to people who can not afford

Step 3

IDEATE

Concept Model

I use concept modelling to find ideas about the solution to the challenges and to have an understanding of how these solutions could work at a higher level.

I find this method really helpful & essential to my design process, especially when I get into the ideating/designing phase.

A concept model for the solution. One of the many iterations I made.

Lo-fi Wireframes a.k.a Paper Sketches

Exploring ideas and flows using paper sketches.

Some rough wireframes & user flows sketches.

Step 4

PROTOTYPE

User Interface Design

I started visual designs based on wireframes and insights.

Conclusion

Bookify aims to establish itself as an incentive based book reading app that understands modern reader's expectations and provides a unique experience in digital book reading space. Virtual rewarding and Social sharing remains the key aspect of Bookify to gain organic growth over the time and keep providing constant value to the end user to keep visiting the APP and enjoy numerous benefits. Lets make the World read along, learn and win.

Thankyou :)