Treehouse

Duration: April 2022 (on hold)

The first time I joined a book club was in fourth grade, when I was looking for friends to share my love of reading. Today, there exists so many online communities where thousands of readers bond over their mutual love for books: BookTok, Discord servers, and social media groups. When I began to read for fun again this year, I felt that same need to share it with someone but found that there was a lack of book apps that had what I needed in one place. For this project, I decided to explore those needs and that of other readers.

Identify motivations behind using book apps

Assess attitudes and behaviors towards using book apps

Evaluate pain points users are experiencing while using book apps

Surveys: attitudinal and behavioral questions

Social listening: observing conversations online

Analyze reviews: reading reviews of direct competitors*

* Goodreads, StoryGraph, Bookly, Fable

Research Findings

Users like to feel motivated to read books and need ways to track their goals

Users organize things differently, and would like more customization (tags, ratings, filters, naming system, sorting features)

Users seek recommendations from friends or other readers with similar taste and like to know what others like

Users would like to visualize their progress (using progress bars, graphs, percentages)

Users would like to have more privacy (with ratings, thoughts, notes) or otherwise would only like to share with certain people

Pain Points

Lack of personalization: users categorize information differently, so flexibility and customization is important

Review system: many users prefer a more specific rating system, many have noted a 10 star system is more accurate

Privacy: some users don't want to be influenced by reviews or have their reading experience gamified with statistics; users would like private reviews and notes features

User Personas

Sarah, 18: reads for fun, uses apps to keep track of books and reads reviews, discovers new books through recommendations and book clubs

Martin, 27: reads to learn, likes discussing book content with others and discovering books from friends and other users

Site Map

Mid-fi Wireframes

View on Figma