Goodreads Redesign: Attempt 1

Goodreads Redesign App image

Amazon when started in 1994, it was primarily an online bookstore. It later that they became the multi retail online store. But still amazon is the go to place for book lovers who want to buy books. Amazon has a service called as Goodreads that helps to find people with the books they want to read. It is like IMDB but for books.

The Goodreads App is available in iOS and android as well. Now the concept of the app is good but for me the UI is simply not worth even downloading. So lets look at the reviews the people have given on the playstore.

THE USER REVIEWS:

USER REVIEWS OF THE APP ON THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE

After scouting through the app and talking to three book clubs in my area the main i decided to recreate the goodreads based on the following problems

PROBLEM 1:

The login screens

The First Image is the new one and second image is the original Sign UP screen.

As you can see from the second image, just to sign up I have redirected to the another page. This increases the number of clicks for the user. The general convention is to show sign up page on the start and take the user to another page to sign into the app.

The Sign In redesign page.

PROBLEM 2

The Landing Page

Now as soon as the user has sign upped or signed into the app the home page becomes confusing for him.

The first homepage is the new one and the second one is the current homepage.

There are lot of problems according to me. First of all instead of showing new books released, they show what’s popular in each genre. One of the best feature of goodreads is the interview they conduct with authors. This feature seems to be nowhere in the app.

Second the user without even knowing about the book is asked to rate the book. This is hilarious. How can you ask someone to rate a book which he has not even read.

PROBLEM 3:

The My Books Page

The first one is the new My books page and the second one is the original my books page on the app.

Third the my books feature. In the original app, in the my books page the user is asked to create shelves for books he wants to categorize. The standard ones are read currently reading and to read. The user gets confused as what does read maen. Therefore I decided to recreate the whole page. There should be only two tabs. To read and currently reading. I have also shown the images on the books the user has added under each of these tabs.

PROBLEM 4

Different Notifications pages

Two different notification tabs.

Now on the above screen the original app has two different notifications pages of different types of notifications. The user is confused between the World Icon on the top and Updates page. Therefore I tried to make all the notifications on a single page.

This way the user has to only jump to notifications tab to get all the notifications he receives. Wheather which book is trending or who is doing on goodreads. The user saves time and reduces the number of clicks.

PROBLEM 5

User doesn’t know what’s trending currently.

This is the biggest fault in the app. The user only gets to know what’s happening in each genre rather than what’s currently on the top. There no way to see what’s trending over all. Hence I decided to create a trending page. Here is the new design of the page.

PROBLEM 6:

The search UI.

I felt the Search UI is little bit bombarding. The user is given a lot of information on a very short screen. Therefore I decided to create another tab to show the search results. This way the user can see all his results images clearly.

PROBLEM 7:

Not so clear when finding out the book details.

Half of the page in the original app goes just for not so useful buttons. In the new redesign page (the first image). I have tried keep all the information in a single page. I have kept the minimal design. The ratings, want to read button and buy from amazon.in have been put in a single row. Hence they free up much space on the page.

These were the few issues that I found on the goodreads app. Now i will post the sketches.

The sketches for my redesigned goodreads app.

What I was able to achieve on this redesign app?

1. Understanding the User wants: I was able to pin out the pain points of the users and was able to fix up to the best of my knowledge.
2. Sketching is important: As I got to know the Adobe XD powers, I had the urge to directly jump to design the whole app. But as I sat to sketch the layout of the app, I was happy that I didn’t jump directly into the designing part. I learnt that sketching helps us to gather our thoughts and then makes the design process faster on the Adobe XD.
3. Patience: This is the key thing I learnt while doing this app. If i had directly did the design on XD then i would have lost a lot of experience that sketching gave me. Also it helped to be patient and let the ideas flow to yourself.
4. Consistency: I learned the importance of keeping a consistent ux flow of an app and why it is so important.

What could have been improved?

1. The navigation bar: I could have created a proper bottom navigation bar for the app. It could have been a better navigation bar, then I did.
2. More playful with colour: I could have used a much better colour palette for the whole app. Plain white and orange was looking too simple for the app.
3. More user research: I would have like to do a much more user research and user testing for the app. Unfortunately I couldnt do it because of the time constraint.

A big thanks to Zoshua Colah for giving us this project.

I hope you guys like the project. I am open to all feedback.

Thanks,

Khush Gosrani.

All the images inside the redesign app are not mine. They belong to goodreads.com

Update: I have attempted second time to redesign the app.

here is the link

Goodreads — Attempt 2