Reader app

Favorite Book	The Help
Occupation	Elementary School Teacher
Devices	Android Phone, iPad
Reading Style	NYT Top 100. Anything critically reviewed on book blogs to discover new Authors
Social Networks Pref	Keeps in touch with Friends Plays a few social games Networks with other Teachers
Book Store Prefs.	iBooks and public libraries
Pain Points	Lends out books and never gets them back Can’t find books when needs them Has trouble keeping track of passages she marked

Favorite Book	Malcolm Gladewells’s newest Book
Occupation	I School student
Devices	Kindle, Chromebook, iPhone, Nexus 7 tablet
Reading Style	Samples lots of books
Social Networks Pref	Hype-Connected shares things to find like cats gifs and essays
Book Store Prefs.	Amazon, University Library and new book apps (like oyster)
Pain Points	Disorganized ebook collections Incompatibility Sharing book is difficult (or book passages)

Favorite Book	1Q84
Occupation	Artist
Devices	iPhone
Reading Style	“Real” Books from start to finish
Social Networks Pref	Self promotion of artwork on various social networks Discovery for artwork inspiration
Book Store Prefs.	Used Bookstores and sometimes grudgingly Amazon
Pain Points	Has stacks of books everywhere Has trouble discovering new books (cost of getting a new book is high in both money and time spent)

Scenarios

Lending a Book – Sarah

Sarah uses her iPad to read a David Sedaris book she recently added to our reading app. She reads a hilarious chapter about parents that reminders her of her own and she wants to share the humor with her sister. She double taps her book which brings up the reading app’s lending menu. She taps the email icon and a compose screen pops up. Since our app has access to her email contacts, she is quickly able to auto complete her sister’s email, write a quick message about why she wants to share the chapter. Sarah’s sister receives an email notification on her iPhone, clicks a large ‘Start Reading it Now’ button, and is brought to the beginning of the chapter Sarah lent her. She’s already signed into our reading app and a bookmark linking to the chapter is added to her library.

Book Discovery Scenario – Patricia

Patricia is on her iPhone browsing her social networks when she comes across a post by Sarah. Sarah shared a link to a book she recently read that she “absolutely loved.” Patricia is intrigued, so she clicks on the post. She is brought immediately to the title page of the book and she reads through a few pages. Patricia decides she’d like to read more later, so she taps a bookmark icon at the top right part of the screen. She hasn’t used this reading app before, so she is prompted for an email and a password. After entering this information she is notified by the reading app that the book has been saved to her library. When Patricia gets home later, she opens the reading app on her desktop computer and starts reading again. “Wow” she exclaims, I can really read this book any where I want!

Sharing a Chapter/Passage Scenario – Jeffrey or Sarah

Jeffrey loves to share on his social networks to get commentary or answers to questions. He is reading a particularly interesting passage from a Creation Myth book and he want to quickly ping his social network to get other’s thoughts. He slowly drags his finger along the text to create a highlight selection. After finishing the highlight selection a menu opens below his finger for him to choose ‘Note’, ‘Link’, ‘Share’; he taps ‘Share.’ This action opens up a menu showing his active social networks and he taps Tweet. This creates a Twitter tweet that links to his passage highlight, and he adds some text of his own to the tweet. A few of Jeffrey’s friends see his tweet and read his passage on a Twitter card, right in the context of the book. They read a few pages, and one of them decides to add the book to their library.

Storyboards

Lending a Book

Discovering a book on a social network

Sharing a passage from a chapter

Links to pre-production Persona and Storyboard work

Personas Post It Notes

Sarah Lending Part 1 

Sarah Lending Part 2 

Jeffrey Sharing a Passage

Patricia Discovering a Book 

App Map

Our App Map is broken down into three areas, Reading, Library, and Bookstore. These are the three core functionalities of our application.

The Reading portion also includes social screens which are an important part of the onboarding experience for a new user. Interactions within the Reading portion support a user’s reading activity as well as giving the user actions to take with a book, such as bookmarking, annotation, sharing, and navigation with search or table of contents. The IT Screen from the Reading portion is our Reading Screen.

The Library portion of our App Map is where a user will interact at a higher level with the books that they purchase or import. Here a user will be supported to organize the books they own and access information about the book such as reading progress, notes, bookmarks, or social activities. The IT Screen from the Library portion is our Library Screen.

The Bookstore portion of our App Map includes a high level map of our bookstore functionality. We are very concerned with how in-app purchases might affect our business model and anticipate that this portion of our service will be developed as a responsive website.

IT Screen Concepts

Reading Screen

For the reading screen, our goal was to combine a minimalist reading interface, an interface having little or no distractions from reading, with easy to access reading features.  We created three concepts that experiment with different ways that users can access the reading features we include, such as annotations, sharing, settings,  search and table of contents navigation, and navigation back to the library.

Concept 1 – tap to expose actions

 

Concept 2 – tap to expose book actions, swipe to access table of contents

 

Concept 3 – tap to expose icons, double tap to expose library navigation

Library Screen

For the library screen, our goal was to give users a high level overview of what books they have in the library, as well as expose both book information and actions to users. We want the interaction to be seamless, fun, and easy to remember. To achieve this we experiment with swiping the book list item to give users access to menu options. Also, one of the primary activities a use might want to take from the library is adding another book to the library, so we prominently expose a plus icon to users, where they can discover methods of adding books to the library.

Concept 1 – Swipe book title to access book actions

Concept 2 – Book icons are exposed with a larger cover image

Concept 3 – Large book covers, swipe the cover left or right to access book information or actions

 

Key Task Flows

Annotation and Sharing a Passage or Chapter

Landing from Social, in-book Purchase / Adding to Library

 

Import Books to Library

 

Task Flows Annotated with Animations

Annotation and Sharing a Passage or Chapter

 

Landing from Social, in-book Purchase / Adding to Library

 

 

Import Books to Library

 

 

Recruiting Plan

• Interviewee Source

  • Noise – 5 users

  • Craigslist – 3 users

  • Follow up from initial interviews – 2 users

  • Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/ebooks)- in person / virtual interviews over skype?

• Incentives

  • To rewards users for giving us their time, we will ask them to pick a ebook for us to lend them during the tasks.

  • At the end of the interview, they will have a actual copy of that book to keep.

Script For Usability Test

 

• Introduction (5 min)

  • Who we are

  • Explain why we are building a reader & store

• Background (15 min)

  • What is their familiarity with e-reading

  • What social networks do they use

  • How often do they read on their phone

  • Do they read for work? pleasure? school?

• Tasks (40 min)

  • Start reading a book that we have share with them from a social network.

  • Read until they are asked to purchase the book, then have them sign up

    • Get reactions to our “purchase” messaging

  • Ask them to highlight and share a passage from that book

  • Ask them to lend a book to us

    • Get insight into the user’s mental model of “lending”

  • Ask them to link their account to dropbox

• Follow-up (10 min) (from the book)

  • Are prospective users interested in the app concept?

  • Does the social feature set meet their usage of social networks?

  • Are they able to navigate using the gestures we defined?

  • Would they use the purchase system.

  • Would the lend books?

• Wrap (5 min)

  • Thank them and get contact information

Mood Boards

Mood Board 1

Mood Board 2

 

UI Style Board