Imagine the scenario: You’ve just bought a book and cannot wait to start reading it. Everything goes well for the first couple of days, but you are so busy with other things in your life that it seems you just can’t make time to sit down and read a few pages of your beloved book. Lectio was created to help readers, motivating them to finish their reading, simply reminding them how many pages they should read a day.
Tools: Sketch and Marvel
My Role: End-to-end process
The Problem
Busy schedules, family demanding time or simply lack of motivation might be putting readers in a situation where they find it difficult to make time to finish reading books that once they've started.
Discovery Phase
User Research
User Research was essential to understand the potential user and to come up with the right solution. In order to work on finding the solution to our problem, I must understand why and how avid readers start and finish reading books.
Methods: Interviews and Online Survey
Readers were able to share their thoughts and experiences about why do they read, how they read, how they find it difficult to make time to read a book and what do they expect from an app that might help them to keep track of their reading.
The interviews took place in an independent bookshop in West London and a well-known bookshop chain in Central London.
The participants for the survey were selected after screening, for better results. Reddit (r/books) was the channel used to summon participants due to a large number of members in the channel (17m).
Key Insights
People read books because they want to develop new or existent skills, to improve vocabulary and grammar, to level-up their mindset and intellectual growth, to be able to see different perspectives in life.
They feel that a good book has the power to provides a certain “company” feeling, such as a friendship. They believe that people they look up to and other successful people constant read books. They also state that finishing reading a book gives an accomplishment feeling.
What gets in users’ way of reading/finishing a book?
- Watching movies and series;
- Taking care of the family (e.g. playing with kids, preparing meals, house chores);
- Using social media on smartphones;
- Tiredness;
- Health problems (such as stress, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, etc.).
Competitor Analysis
Four competitors were analysed in order to understand how to build the potential user flow and to observe how a daily tracking would work with a set target. These competitors were: Goodreads, Audible, Trello and Todoist.
Some positive features were observed:
“Reading challenge” where you can set up a personal challenge; Good UI and easy to navigate; Easy to create labels and has accessibility for colourblind users; Able to add and set a schedule; Give suggestions to users on when to finish their task.
However, none of them had:
A feature that could allow the user to daily track the reading;
Count of number of pages and how many days left to finish the book.
Persona
Meet Sylvia, the main persona created based on user research.
User Flow
A user flow was created to ensure a smooth process to users and also to illustrate to stakeholders how users will be acting while using the app, which decisions they'll be making in order to find a book, select a date to finish reading it and to add it to the bookshelf.
The Solution
MVP
- Log in using email or social media
- Book search
- Choose a date to finish reading the book
- "Finish" (book) button
- "Edit" (date) button: in case the reader would like to either postpone de end date or speed up the reading
- "Stop" (reading book) button: in case the user has no interest in finish the book due to a lack of interest in the book plot.
- Recommend book on social media: Since many users confirmed that they get distracted due to constate use of social media, adding the social share can motivate them to accomplish their reading. Once finished reading a book, social sharing will give users the feeling of social influence.
- Add book to bookshelf
Wireframe
Task: Selecting the date that the user would like to finish reading the book.
User Testing
Three users took part in the testing.
- User 1
Confused about where to click first to select a date to finish her book. "I don't like how it's shown to me, I don't know why but I just don't". The first action was to tap on the 0 days bar, after no action, the user tapped on "select the date". - User 2
Hesitated when tapping on "Select the Date". Why enquired why the hesitation "I wasn't sure if I should tap here (select the date) or here (button with tick symbol) - User 3
Completed the task with no hesitation.
Redesigning the task
The feedback from users while testing was extremely valuable and helpful since it showed clearly that the given task couldn't be performed in an intuitive way for all users. Wireframes had to be redesigned.
Takeaway
Finishing reading a book gives people an accomplishment feeling. Many readers would like to read more books throughout the year, however, busy lives and family demanding can easily make them forget to read a few pages. The solution to creating a book tracker app will motivate users — after making time to read — to keep reading the book until the "due date".
Next Steps
Gamification;
Reading challenges;
Buy book (powered by Amazon)
