BOOKNEST
App Concept
BOOKNEST was thought out and developed by myself and 3 of my classmates at UCI’s UX/UI Bootcamp. We created this app to help book lovers discover a community that loves books and wants to discuss books as much as they do. We also created this app for non-book lovers looking to dip their toes into the endless pool of education and imagination.
.png)
Final Product
Other Team Members
Blake Grace & Shivani
My Role:
Research Design and Presentation
The Process
Research
Over the course of 2 days, we conducted 4 user interviews and 46 user surveys to gather as much data as possible. From our interviews we found out that the busy lifestyle people had hindered their abilities to enjoy discussing books in groups. They also revealed that 3 out of 4 people preferred to read fiction over non fiction books. Through our survey we discovered that a little over half of the people enjoyed reading actively and it was split half and half for Physical books and Audio Books. The data we gathered helped us decide to focus on the active reader path for our app vs. the non active reader path which was slightly different in coaching.
User Persona
After the interviews and surveys, we were really able to hone in on the active user and what they looked like. We decided that our Active reader would have a lot of activities that took up her time day to day, and also does not have a reliable means of transportation to really drive in the lack of accessibility for attending in-person meetings.
Storyboard
After gathering data and creating our user persona, the Storyboard came together fairly easy. We had a clear idea of what we wanted to accomplish. We chose to create a Storyboard vs. a User Journey Map due to the nature of our app being about books and we thought we could convey the idea better!
Lofi Prototype
Finally we were able to reach the design phase and start to put our ideas to paper. During our first sketches we created the most basic versions of what we wanted so we had room for improvement. Based on everything we have discovered so far, we continued along the active reader user path.
User Testing
User testing turned out to be quite helpful with our final version of the app. The users brought up questions about the 2nd preference question the most, due to its short time frame. They also suggested converting the last question to multiple choice so the user has an idea of what we are looking for. These tests really helped shift us in the right direction and made us see what was needing some change.
Final Prototype
Once we got together as a team and made the final design decisions, we were able to move forward with making the app the best it could be. We took the users suggestions and applied them to the slides below to make them more user friendly.
What's Next
Our app still has a lot of building and designing to go through and we can't wait to add more features that are not only needed but wanted by the users. We still need to build out the dashboard and the features needed to make that successful and we also want to include background music curated for the book you are reading. Our takeaways fall more into the back office work that is needed to make the project succeed. This project was a great opportunity for us to learn how to delegate, prioritize, and manage group time and schedules. We will definitely be taking these takeaways and applying them to future projects.