Hope my Medium article could improve Medium — a UX case study
Me?
First thing first in the morning: Medium.
Last thing last at night: Medium
I guess almost all the knowledge and critical opinions I got for my career comes from Medium. So I save a lot. And by saving a lot I unintentionally turned my searching skill to another level. Look at this mess:
I started saving articles in 2017 and you know two years of reading results in over 100 articles saved. Sometimes I want to show my colleagues about the information I read in one article, or just to bring up something I read but I forgot, but it seems like there are no other ways for me to open that article other than “finding a needle in a haystack".
And as a some-time writer (not fulltime not part-time hehe), I need to re-access my article to edit, to delete, or just to see the clap number, … but it seems like I have to “find a needle in a haystack” again with this Stories list
All of my articles and comments are put in one list, and I don’t even know which one is article, which one is comment as they look alike.
So I guess I gotta figure out a way to make my day cooler 😎
How am I gonna do that
Here’s my process:
1. Hypothesis
Problems
From my observation, I have some problems in mind that I think Medium is having as below, and these are to be tested by further research.
- Confused to re-access own stories: As brought up above, I have to come to the “Stories” page and all I see was all comments and articles kept in one list only, no filter, no sorting.
- Difficult to reach saved posts: Shown above, a list of over 100 articles that I saved, no filter, I have to skim and take the article I want out myself.
- Saved posts get forgotten: I save around 100 articles but probably half of them are unread, guess we have to make those precious things unforgettable.
User overview
I have some types of users in mind after talking to my friends about their Medium reading behaviors:
- KOLs: Write for fame and knowledge sharing, usually have a lot of followers.
- Fulltime writers: Write all the time for specific fields/publications, writing is their main revenue stream,
- Specialists: Seek knowledge from custom fields and publications on Medium, write to share knowledge and to expose to networks, improve by comments.
- Branding teams: Create own publication, write to attract and improve brand image/equity.
In this case I will focus on the Specialists, as they take up for the highest percentage in the network, and they have the strongest need of saving articles as the KOLs and branding teams write to expose mostly, and Fulltime writers care more about their work.
2. User Research
Persona
After interviews, here’s the picture of the Specialists that I focus on in this case
User interview takeaways
As this case focus on a small flow of Medium, I started the interviews with 8 people in total, all of them use Medium as a main source for knowledge sharing for the average of 4–5 times reading per week. We talked about behaviors when using Medium, and below are some takeaways from those valuable talks.
- Purposes: obtain useful knowledge for work (usually when they have to deal with new work that need researching).
Medium = academic + sharing + instant + up to date.
3/8 write articles to share knowledge and build portfolio. - Reading time: 7/8 in early morning, before work due to (1) email push and (2) skimming for later focused reading.
- Interests: 3–4 topics, popularly UX, tech, personal growth, business.
- Saving behavior: They save articles for future references, or for purposeful and focused reading later, when they have time.
- 6/8 save to Medium, 2/8 save to browser due to premium content (you know you can open a paid article in Incognito window to read without paying?)
- 7/8 save interesting articles but forget to read them. - Reading platform: 8/8 use laptop/desktop when at work to read easier, mobile is only used for skimming before sleeping/in the morning or when free, to bookmark articles.
User journeys
Based on their sharing, I have 2 simple user journeys to map their process of bookmarking and writing articles. These journeys I use for further understanding their hard time doing it.
As illustrated above, I will shift my focus to a small flow in each journey, which is the most painful for users.
Some observations from their behaviors when performing tasks in these flows and their feedbacks let me define their pain points.
3. Define
Pain point 1: Users forget about saved articles
- Saved articles are broken down to 2 kinds:
(1) read, and saved to future need as reference;
(2) unread due to lack of time, and saved to read later. - 1st type is usually some kind of fundamental knowledge, and is re-accessed more often than 2nd type.
- 2nd type is forgotten as users skim and save a lot, then forget which articles they save as they do not need them right away - they only need them when they have work that requires that knowledge to do.
Pain point 2: Users get drowned in the list of saved articles
- No filter, sorting. They have to scroll all the way and skim titles to find the article they need.
Pain point 3: Users get lost in the list of “Stories”
- Comments and articles are brought in one list, no differentiation, no filter, sorting.
4. Ideate
Proposed solutions
Straightforward as it sounds, solutions come from reasons. Solving pain point 2 and 3 seems straight to the point as users feel painful because they cannot find articles easier.
For pain point 1, as users know the time they could read the articles purposely, I came up with some sort of new toys to make articles unforgettable.
My new flow of bookmarking an article
And some new page structures
Sketch
Just some of the screens.
User Interface
Pardon my dumb design.
Flow: Bookmark an article
Restructure of Bookmark page and Stories page
5. Validate: There should be this step, but I haven’t done it so, well, hope I could get feedbacks right from the comments!
Conclusion
These problems come mostly from my observation and my daily use of Medium, and together I verified with my friends in the interview group. The problems were quite straight to the point, and these are the solutions that I come up with to deal with them, not perfect, but somehow it may help.
As from my point, I think there will be points that should be made better and I think I’m gonna put in questions here waiting for responses:
- Would there be a quicker way to do all of these things, as walking through 4 steps to save an article may take around 2 minutes disrupting the reading?
- Would there be a better way to help form their habit, instead of 10000 notifications like Duolingo but none of them works?
- …
Hope to have some cool thoughts down there in the comment area 😎
