Kindle E-reader Device
Connecting book lovers with social sharing, community engagement & interaction.
My Role:
Project Lead & UX Designer
Responsibilities:
I maintained the project timeline and important deadlines by sending out daily End Of Day recaps and leading daily morning Stand Ups to manage priorities and tasks
I synthesized our research findings into a user-persona. I established who our user was, their goals, motivations, and pain points
Timeline:
2 Week Sprint, February 2024-March 2024
Team:
Myself, Jessica Goff & Najee Robles
Tools:
Figma, Google Surveys, Notion, Canva, Zoom Interviews, Otter & Google Docs
Kindle is
the largest market share of the e-reader and eBook market. They are the destination for ebooks and e-reading. Today book readers are connecting on different book-loving sections on social media platforms. Their reading experience is more online than ever before.
Business Goals
Become the preferred platform for not only reading, but sharing progress and reflections while connecting with others.
The Opportunity
Enhance the Kindle platform as the go-to method to not only read, but also share their personal journeys and reflections, forging deeper connections with others along the way.
We conceived three distinct solutions and the development of a high-fidelity prototype crafted in Figma.
Research
Who are we designing for & why?
Surveys
19 participants we learned:
Reading Communities
Almost all eBook readers participate in 1 or more reading communities
Social Media
is heavily used to participate in a reading community
User Interviews
6 user interviews we noticed common themes among our readers:
Book Lovers
Reads both physical & Ebooks
“Reading is actually my favorite hobby.
I enjoy it more than watching TV, which I think some people find unusual”.
-Interview quote
Convenience
Busy lifestyle, relies on time savers
“Honestly, I mostly read on my commute to work
or whenever I can squeeze it into my limited downtime”.
-Interview quote
Community
Reading enhanced by community
“In the past, I would just go to used bookstores and let the store tell me what I wanted to read. I would say since social media I've became more into the book community”.
-Interview quote
Competitive Research
Simple design, personalized profile, cross-platform sharing & community engagement
Direct Competitors:
Apple Books
Effortless Integration amongst users
Clean Design
Star Rating
Good Reads
Community Groups
Interactive Challenges
Personalized Profiles
Indirect Competitors:
Spotify
Sharing playlists, albums, songs
to multiple different platforms
Curated songs and playlists
Creating communities
Cross sharing platforms
Kendal: User Persona
Kendal is trying to find a balance between their full time, busy schedule and their love of reading. They usually read on their commute or downtime and find ebooks to be especially convenient. Reading helps them wind down after a long day, so they also like to read before bed. Kendal values recommendations from friends and social media to help them decide on what to read. They are influenced by posts and ratings on a variety of social media platforms. They love a wide range of genres and they enjoy sharing their own experiences of reading with others. It’s important for Kendal to be apart of a reading community, whether it’s a book club, a small group of friends or an online platform.
Behaviors:
Reads both eBooks & physical books
Seeks out & shares book recommendations
Reads book reviews
Participates in book challenges; self-set or part of the community
Goals & Motivations:
Reads for relaxation and as an escape
Uses reading to challenge their imagination
Sometimes will use books to educate themselves on a certain topic
Connect with and expand their network of fellow readers
Pain Points:
Difficult to capture & share all their reading resources in one place
Desire for more diverse options within genres within eBooks
Not enough time to read
Sometimes eBook apps can make it difficult to fully escape due to interruptions
User Stories
We developed a Journey Map to help understand our user’s needs and behaviors. The Journey Map provides valuable insights into the highs and lows of Kendal’s reading experience.
The Problem
Kendal needs a way to find books to read, and share their thoughts with others in order to contribute value to the reading community while enhancing their own reading experience.
Currently Kendal can’t access all their reading resources in one place so it’s disruptive to their overall reading journey.
Design
Using Figma we created mid-fidelity wireframes to build out a prototype.
Sketches
How Might We foster connections without creating disruptions?
With our user’s needs in mind and brainstorming “How Might We” statements we decided on the most important features and created Three main flows: Community Flow, Review Flow and Share Flow.
In order to generate as many solutions as possible we conducted and ideation workshop and each sketched our own solutions with a different flow in mind.
Wireframes
We assigned wireframes to the user flow the team member previously worked on. We designed for the Kindle App and decided to use the iPad frame; being that our users tend to read most from their iPad or tablet.
Feature Highlights:
Main Page also known as the Discover, caters to what matters to our reader: what they're currently reading, their reading queue, whats trending, their curated booklists, and their community.
The Global Navigation is at the bottom of the main page, made up of the Discover, Library, Currently reading book, Community and More.
Action Pop-Up/Overlay incorporate seamless and intuitive path to the share, edit and review flows
Community Page is where to access what friends are reading
Testing
We conducted a series of usability testing to gather qualitative & quantitative data findings.
Test Plan
Included the testing objectives, metrics, script and scenarios.
The users were oriented to our mid-fidelity prototype using Zoom and the Figma prototype. Participants were selected through the previous screener Google survey which verified their experience using an eBook.
User testing was completed with 4 individuals aged 22-55, 3 female and 1 male.
Findings
All 4 users successfully completed the 3 tasks laid out.
Each user enjoyed the ease of navigation stating how easy it was to complete the tasks.
The users enjoyed the ability to share what they were reading to multiple platforms.
The users highlighted the community feature- in order to connect to other readers especially to learn what their fellow readers are reading.
Errors
No Exit: 1 user could not exit the action overlay because there was no back-button
Not an entrance: 3 users preferred to click on “Community Reads” title instead of the bottom navigation which is how the prototype was designed
Ellipses: 2 users had hesitation with the ellipses. 1 stated that “Ultimately, I like that it's nondescriptive and doesn’t take away from the reading experience, and it's improvement on the current interface which actually has no indicator or call to action.”
High Fidelity Updates
Based on the qualitative & quantitative data findings from our testing we applied the design changes.
Style Guide
“We can never be better than paper, but we can be as compelling”.
-Amazon’s Chris Green, VP of Design
Prototype
Created in Figma we developed our refined High-Fidelity prototype.
Outcomes
Three innovative solutions built our for the Kindle app, proven to make it easy for users to find new books, review and rate what they’re reading, and to share with their community within and outside of the Kindle app, all without leaving the Kindle Platform. What I learned and next steps below:
Next Steps
With more time, I would prioritize 3 main objectives:
Updated platform for housing reader tracking "achievements" such as annual book goals, reading challenges, book of the month etc.
Build out the community aspect such as creating a user profile & how to find friends / update the community flow.
Incorporating a quiet mode option
Takeaways
It’s time for me to buy a Kindle! I truly enjoyed working on this project with my small but mighty team. We brought so many ideas to our ideation workshops while prioritizing what mattered most to our business need and our user’s need. I learned that “solutioning” is important, but it’t gathering meaningful data, and defining who we are designing for and why we are designing for them is what matters first.
