Role | UX Designer
Objective | Create and Design End-to-End Mobile App
My Bhuku Case Study is a school project I created for DesignLab
Bhuku has started collecting data on popular books. Inspired by goodreads.com, Bhuku wants to give a more user-centric approach to their app, adding features and flows that make it delightful for people to use. Bhuku is an app for book lovers that will help users track everything they own, books they have read, what they will read next, and also everything they have loved so far. In essence, it’s quite similar to goodreads.com.
Research Goals
• Understand current reading technology and determine why readers, read from tablets, phones or paper back books.
• Review all book apps that are currently out there today and discover the weakness and strengths of the current book apps.
• Identify motivations and goals, pain points and needs for the stakeholders.
Design Process
Research Questions
• What are the users reading and why? Why are they reading and how?
• Where are the current users pain points and goals.
• Are the users keeping track of their reading? How are they doing that?
• Who are the top competitors and why? What other kinds of technology can be integrated with an app based user, like scan bar code, notes, book list and organization apps.
Methodologies
• Secondary Research: Understand the current reading technology, the demographics and current organizational book tools out there.
• User Interviews: Create a interview guide and conduct interviews with at least 5-10 people who would potentially use the Bhuku app and that would fall into my demographic majority.
• Market Research and Competitive Analysis: Understanding Bhuku’s direct competitors and their successes and failures. Their disadvantages and their advantages. What else is being used for this type of need and why. Patterns being used and maybe in look into areas that are not just books, but the movies.
Persona
Before I created my persona, I interviewed ten people on how they find books to read what types of reading apps they use. I found that a lot of people read and read a lot. They are constantly looking for the next best adventure to dive into and they don't always read the reviews, they go by what they hear from friends or the best selling books. That is why I created a persona that fits this picture, I wanted someone that is looking to stay organized and wants to keep track of books they find and also be presented with a new book from the books they have saved in their application. Below is Bella who is a teacher and travels a lot, she wants to keep track of the books she wants to use in her lessons, but has a hard time doing that with her busy life.
Competitive Analysis
Here are some direct competitors I found while doing my research for Bhuku. From my interviews I found that a lot of people don't use the book apps, and some do, but they really like just being surprised. My stakeholders like having books on audio, but also wanted to mostly keep a list of books they are interested in reading, some even mention they just snap a photo of the book in order to save, but then it get lost in the photos and they forget they took it. The direct competitors that I found don't really offer that type of system for their users. Even though these are the top book apps I found they all have weaknesses, but also gains that can be used for bhuku.
Site Map and feature road map
I started the application map first by adding the homepage first and then I added on the features that my stakeholders would want from the interviews and research that was collected. The biggest part of my research was learning how people search for books and I found that they don’t go by genre, they wanted to be surprised they want to get lost in a book and sometimes the best way is not knowing anything about it before they open it. The big feature that was needed for this site, was a way for my stakeholders to keep track of the books they found, so I created a tab that was just for taking a picture of the book and having the application add it to the the users library.
Task Flow and User Task Flow
Using the persona I created I put together a user task flow for Bhuku. To show the different reasons for the features that were created for the application. Why there are different ways to search and how it is useful for the stakeholders to be surprised and also for the user to be able to scan and save a book they have found to their list.
I put together a user task flow to show all the different pathway the user could go through in order to search and save a book to their library and how they can search. It was important for part before I started to work on the wireframes since I wanted to make sure that I had all the features that are needed for the app and the pages that would follow later.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Here are some rough low fidelity wireframes with the main features that have been were needed for my stakeholders. I decided to use photo cards and easy to understand icon buttons so that this application could be used for all ages if wanted. It could be used for students or small children who are looking to get ahead in school. I wanted anyone to be able to use this app. Even for a small child, so I made sure it was easy for the user to understand.
Brand Logo Design and UI Kit
I wanted to go with a logo that would be used as a symbol for bookmarking since this application is bookmarking tool to keep track of the books the user has found. I used a B for Bhuku and for Books and created a pencil like image. With the idea of “Book Marking” keeping track of your books. In a way this is the same thing, book-marking the books you want to read.
The big part of my brand and UI kit, was creating something that was easy to read and visually interesting. I liked using gradients and colorful buttons. To create hierarchy I used colors and buttons.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Creating the high fidelity wireframes is always one of my favorite parts of UX design. Since I am finally bringing the work to life. To create design hierarchy I made it so that the icons in the navigation bar lights up when the user is in that page, while the gray color is showing the user that they are not on that section. The user is never lost or confused to where they are in the application. The pink check marks gives the user certainty that their book has been added without having to go back into their library to double check that the update what made.
High Fidelity Prototype and Live Prototype Video
After I brought all my high fidelity wireframes together and created a prototype, I had my interviewers users test out the prototype, they all had positive comments and enjoyed the Bhuku Book Application. They mentioned how they knew exactly where they were in the navigation and the easy ways to add their books to their shelf. They loved the colors and the idea that you can easily scan a book and drop it into your own personal list. They said they liked the logo and hierarchy of the design elements, since the light up icons help navigate the app.
Conclusion
I found that the take away from my research for Bhuku was so much different than I had expected. I thought more people would be interested in reviews, but instead I found that people were more interested in being surprised. I found that my stakeholders wanted to keep track of the books they were interested in reading, I found that Mothers need this tool most of all since they read to their children at night. It was fun hearing about people’s different reading habits and the books they are interested in reading and the want and need to search for more and keep track of the books they found. It was really interesting to learn that most people don’t look for books the old school way of searching by genre and all the new and current different ways people find books. It was fun creating the persona and putting together a theme and brand for my application.