Goodreads redesign.
Problem Description:
Avid readers connect to a book on so many levels, it’s an out-of-this-world escape that many of us love to have while sitting comfortably in our own homes. With that in mind, there are few places online to share your book reviews. The main site that is offered is Goodreads.
The website itself gives a simple solution to a community that is itching for something bigger; the connection of a community of other readers. It’s easy to give a quick review with a 1 star or 5 but it takes a push to leave a more thoughtful review and most don’t do that. As a reader, I want to talk about what I felt after a book, I want to see others’ opinions besides a simple star that makes me want to go and read that book. It also affects the author as they might be compelled to understand why this book isn’t getting the feeling they may be trying to get across, and what they need to work on to make that connection better in their next book.
Proposed Solution:
My proposed solution would be to help take those pain points of missing connections and reviews on Goodreads and create a new user-friendly direction.
Edit: There have been new updates to the Goodreads site which they have added a comment section to your profile page like I had researched and identified.
My role:
This project was conceived, researched, and re-designed by myself in a remote setting.
Users:
Experienced and novice book readers: An experienced reader wants a community to go back to post their reviews and see other reviews of books they may want to read. A place they want to go back to and feel welcomed each time. A novice book reader might be looking for a certain feeling of a site before joining that Goodreads may not be showing at the moment.
Secondary user; Authors: They would want a place to see why readers like or dislike their book. They could also find inspiration for what a reader is looking for.
Research methods:
Affinity diagramming
Competitive analysis
Contextual inquiry
Directed storytelling
Journey Mapping
User personas
Remote research
Tools:
Interactive prototypes
Miro
Scriptwriting
Sketch
Figma
Canva
Zoom
Competitive Audit
Goal: As a method of preliminary research, I completed a competitive audit by examining similar tools to identify features, flows, processes, and UI elements that are similar, different, or could be valuable for Goodreads.
Contextual Inquiry.
Goal: To gain additional insights into how different users of Goodreads approach the process of leaving a review, finding books to read, connecting to other readers, and any general use of Goodreads. I interviewed four separate users to better understand their pain points and opportunities.
Findings: 3/3 of users wanted to have a deeper connection within the reading community.
3/3 found it hard to start a review.
3/3 found finding a reason to read a book could be difficult to find outside of a rating system which didn’t mean that much to them.
User Personas
Goals: Based on the key findings from my research, I created an user persona for the Goodreads user. As I was developing my prioritized feature list I kept these personas in mind.
Concept Evaluation.
Insights: I conducted concept evaluation exercises with three book readers research participants to gain a better understanding of how and why these users would use my concepts.
Connection.
Through my research, the big overarching theme that kept showing up was having that connection with other book readers was missing. You can see a review someone left but it wasn’t always understood why they left that review. With this in mind, I had ideation of how to bridge his gap.
Helpful start.
I also heard users struggle to start a review outside of leaving a simple 1-5 star. They had all these feelings and thoughts flowing through their head it was hard to pinpoint where to start. Having prompts seemed to be a great starting to help them move forward.
User feed.
Connecting a user feed to Goodreads was also an idea to help bridge the connection between users. 3/3 users brought up their review feed would disappear after a couple of reviews and would be hard to find outside of going directly to that book. Having a feed a user can start and keep track of would help keep users connected.
Interactive prototype and screen flow.
Goals: I created screens in Sketch based on the Goodreads site and the feedback I got from users to make an interactive prototype of the key user flows to help connect the pain points. Below is the full prototype as well as my screens from Sketch.
Next steps.
My next step for this project is to build out more features of building readers together and a better organization of the reviews being seen on your own homepage. I would love to build Goodreads out as a platform for a more accessible platform for users to find books to read. I would also love to redesign for mobile.
As an avid reader, this is a project I feel incredibly passionate about because I think it solves a lot of problems within the Goodreads community.