Roots Case Study
AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE NEEDING PURCHASES
A Bookstore celebrating Black writers, culture and diversity.
Background
As an Independent Bookstore, Roots are proud of its wide variety of World books and connection to the local community. They have a lot of online visitors but these have not converted into purchases. For this reason, they want to improve their search optimisation to rival big retailers while maintaining their small shop appeal and celebration of Afro-Caribbean literature.
Objective
Roots wants to make their connection with the local community even stronger. The goal for this UX project is to determine the best way moving forward so that this bookstore provides a space to hang out, drink coffee and for users to be immersed in the whole book buying experience.
Role and Allocated Time
As a design student I was responsible for the user research, visual design, usability testing, within the UX design framework. This project ran for 2 weeks.
My Design Process
User Interviews
To begin, I carried out 4 user interviews to determine the key features users look for when buying books and discovered bookstores are still valuable to reading enthusiast given the online takeover. Key insights from these interviews include:
1. Local bookstores should celebrate local writers while promoting culture through theatre and live performances
2. Online streaming and talks are great but its by having a place to hand out chat, drink coffee and meet local authors that the real book buying experience comes to life
3. Bookshops is still a relevant space to browse, discover books relevant to what you are looking for. Unlike online buying, you can ask questions to knowledgable staff.
4. The global experience of writing is much bigger bookstores. It should shine a light on writers who otherwise might not be seen
Affinity maps
After interviewing, I created an affinity map. Observations and statements were organized to identify themes, patterns and trends.
‘I statements’ were added which highlighted the follower needs for users:
- Flexible search and quick step buying process
- A World Book Category as user valued ‘shining a light’ on aspiring world authors
- Live readings and events to bring the book buying experience to life
Competitive Analysis of Brick Lane Bookshop
Next, I took a look at Brick Lane Bookshop, a shop more in line with what we want for the Roots’ Bookstore experience.
Brick Lane Bookshop has an extremely simple user flow, from landing page to cart in a few steps. The shop had an extensive East London and London History section. My takeaway led me to consider how Root’s specialism in Caribbean Literature might be showcased in the project’s design stage.
Occasional events are held at the shop, but due to the small size of the space, these are infrequent, and usually arranged by local authors themselves.
Comparison Analysis of Amazon
The needs for a quickly buy and check out service featured heavily from user interviews. With this insight, I looked at the user flow of Amazon’s book purchasing process; from an initial landing page through to Check Out, buying a book took under 30 seconds if you use your account where information such as your bank details and delivery address automatically appears.
Ethical dilemma or useful function to aid key need for quick buying process?
Trends gathered from my research on book retailers ranging from Waterstones, Daunts and Hive who specialise in World Authors revealed:
- There are patterns of following random bookstore users that they find having similar pattern of browsing, reading extracts but not buying
- E-books and book downloads dominant the market for their cheaper prices and quick access
- Users have the tendency to follow a selected genre of books. Si-Fi, Non Fiction, History and Biographies occupy the top searches.
- Interaction between authors and fans are mutually found insightful and very enjoyable, especially in a form of live question and answer session.
This allowed me to uncover opportunities where Roots can truly stand out from its competitors and provide a unique experience for users. I was ready to create my persona.
Persona
In order to develop a typical Persona that depicts the average audience member, I looked back over the Insights, the Needs and the Pain Points from my Affinity Maps. The ‘Paige’ Persona also highlights the major needs of the most important user groups so that they can be addressed.
Defining The Problem
How might we
I then crafted a set of ‘How Might We’ Statements to guide my design. By defining the design challenge and framing it as a question, the roadwork for the ideation phase was paved for a range of innovative solutions.
Through my research, it became evident that the story of World Authors and Caribbean literature ran deep with readers who connected these stories with their own upbringing and identity. I decided to rename this project to ROOTS (from its original title Prose and Poetry), the independent bookstore celebrating Black writers, culture and diversity.
Defining & Prioritizing Features
The main idea of the Roots’ Experience feature is to provide users with a unique book buying experience which combines cafe culture, live readings and book purchases. This experience would touch on the key findings from user interviews and encourage those who might have previously avoided bookstores, to step inside. Additionally the Roots’ Hub experience will allow users to find like-minded people inside and connect authors and fans on a deeper level, increasing user engagement.
Initial Wireframe and Prototype
After low-fidelity sketches, I designed a mid-fidelity wireframe (see below) for usability testings.
Usability Testing and Iterations
Two user journey tests were held with four participants. The feedback provided led to the following two iterations:
Functionality: Wireframes to take users through a consistent flow from one frame to the next rather than frames presented as deck
Accessibility: Wireframes to focus on contrast colours and have options to change text sizes for readability.
In general, participants stated that the podcast features inc the transcription sync mode served a clear purpose and was easy to understand. All who tested were able to get the goal of the feature right away and found it very useful. There were a few key problems from the first sessions which i then captured into a map.
Prototype
I would now like to introduce you to my High Fidelity Prototype
Next steps:
After considering few recommendations, I broke down what is the higher priority and worked my way down from there. These are the focus points for changes:
- Redesign product page section using ‘Closed Card Sorting’
- Expand in-house user experience
- Prototype sync transcription option as this was a key motivation identified in the Persona
Personal Reflections
I loved working on this project as I felt the brief lent itself well to Storytelling (not in the literal sense of reading books but in the stories of the people I interviewed, what they valued about independent bookstores and why spotlighting Caribbean literature was important). I also felt this enabled me to put together a persona which felt rooted (excuse the pun) in the subject matter while identifying key needs and motivations for design considerations such as a podcast feature which allows user to sync as study notes.
Thanks for taking the time to read my case study.