Bookstores are back in business : Part 1
Discover more spaces and events related to books
Hello there 👋
This article is first in the series of articles which talks about my project on building an app for readers and bookstores. This one talks about the research I conducted to understand more about the problems, the User and what solutions could possibly work. Hope you enjoy reading it! 😊
Running any business was never easy, but if you are a bookstore owner in 2020-2021, you have never seen a worse time. With COVID limiting the people's movement and Online stores offering deep discounts for shoppers Bookstores faced a battle like no other. We read reports of multiple stores of Crossword shutting doors and independent bookstores also closing in Pune, Hyderabad and other cities in the country. For me, the argument to save Independent bookstores and other reading spaces is not just to provide a livelihood to thousands of people who work there but also to maintain and protect a culture of reading, talking and sharing experiences over books. I decided to flip the problem and instead of just looking at it from a strategy or business angle decided to look at what can be done for readers/customers so that they step into bookstores more!
To understand the Users better I conducted interviews with 6 people. The age group was 22–28 years. The sample was picked largely on a convenience basis, all users can be classified as active on social media and have access to smart gadgets and the internet. As a screener, we checked that Users has visited a bookstore on average at least more than once in the Quarter. Each interviewee was asked about their reading habits to break the ice followed by their thought process around the purchase of a book. They were also asked to detail where they currently shop for books, what's the reasoning behind the same and why they choose to continue/discontinue visiting bookstores. Over the process, I realised that people were not thinking of only bookstores as spaces to read and expanded on libraries and cafes as well. For each conversation, I created Empathy Maps
Empathy Maps
An Empathy Map is a chart that describes everything a researcher has learned about the user from an interaction. We usually create a single chart for each user followed by an aggregate chart for each person
Let’s understand in short what each of these boxes means
- Says: Includes things that the user says during the interviews. Ideally must include direct quotes
- Does: Actions or behaviours related to the topic which user shares during the interview. If relevant can also include actions of the user during the interview (requirement to capture reactions/emotions during the interview)
- Thinks: This is the most tricky one. It includes things you can tell about the user by observation but they don’t explicitly say it. Facial expressions are a great source of insight into this one.
- Feels: This section covers how a user feels about a certain topic/activity. One can directly ask the User about the same as long as it is done in an open-ended way
Based on the Empathy maps, I was able to identify and define two unique User Personas. (In case you wish to learn more about the contents of the maps please reach out to me )
Experience Enthusiasts
Users with this persona are not reading for an end Goal but enjoy the overall process of reading and thus having a good experience while at it is of prime importance. For them, the ambience, conversations, community and events play a big role in a visit to the store and in making a purchase
Knowledge Seekers
Knowledge seekers usually read to learn about a particular topic (or just learn in general). For them, the focus is connecting with the right set of people who can help them pick the right book (set of books) to solve the purpose. Medium of book and purchase location is usually not top of the mind for them
It must be noted that a reader can possibly have both personas. Depending on situation, environment and the need they can behave as one or the other. The goal we achieve by defining the persona here is to ensure that we understand the mindset of the user point in time as one of these personas and solve for that rather that solve it for a generic reader.
From what I learnt so far, in this project to support bookstores , it made sense to go after the Experience Enthusiast Persona
I created a Goal and a possible User Journey for the persona we selected. I have a confession to make here, I didn’t follow the book here. One should not jump to thinking about solutions when thinking about User Journeys and should try to keep open-ended enough to encourage room to think of multiple things. I ended up being biased by pain points and solutions I started thinking about during the interview phase and my Customer Journey does reflect that. The product I choose to begin designing would help Users to discover spaces and events where they can go, read and indulge in activities linked to books
To further understand the landscape I checked for various apps that help Independent Bookstores list and also looked at Apps for large American Bookstore Chains that help people learn more about their offerings (Came across a unrelated cool video about “bookstores and how to read” while at it ). I did an audit from a design perspective and you can find the findings placed neatly in excel here
After this Primary and Secondary research, it was time to start acting on all the information captured and start expanding on solutions. In the next post, I shall cover how I build User Storyboards, Wireframes and Prototypes. Would cover both the process and further findings of the user and problem in the same
Thanks for reading :)
In case you would like to collaborate with me or try out an early prototype please reach out to me on shahnaimil4@gmail.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/naimilshah/