Client
Personal Project
Completed as part of the Interface Design class for Northwestern's Masters in Information, Design and Strategy (IDS) degree
My Role
Concept and Naming
Research
Branding & Design System
UX/UI Design
Overview
Bibliotreka is a reading tracking app that encourages readers to discover the world through stories.
Problem Statement
For readers and language learners who desire to read more diversely, it can be challenging to find books from other countries or books that interest them in their target language.
Process
Result and Recommendations from Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
As there are currently several popular book tracking apps, I started by doing a competitive analysis of three of them - Goodreads, StoryGraph, and Fable - to understand which features users would expect as well as areas of opportunities to differentiate my app concept.
Personas
Bibliotreka's target audience is readers that seek to explore and understand the world through stories and language. This app would support:
- Diverse Readers : Readers who want to engage in stories from a variety of voices; they seek out different perspectives and experiences
- Language Learners : Readers who use stories to enrich their language learning and to connect culturally to the places that these languages are spoken
- Globe Trotters : Readers who use stories to deepen their experience of the places they travel to
From there I created two main personas.
Personas
Design Iterations & Branding
Bibliotreka is inspired by the golden age of air travel as well as the American passport book.
Lo-fi to hi-fi designs
Final homepage design and continent illustrations
Usability Testing
Throughout the process, from wireframes to hi-fi designs, I received feedback from my classmates which influenced the development of the app.
I used a high-fidelity prototype to conduct a usability test with 5 participants, with the goal to determine if the app was designed in a way that was intuitive to navigate.
These sessions revealed:
- Confusion about where to make and edit goals (if they did not create one during onboarding) : The users goal(s) and the ability to edit them are now prominently displayed on the top of the homepage.
- Filter options are overwhelming : In response to participants finding the filter option overwhelming, it was updated to use drop down menus to visually lighten the page.
- The passport feature delights users : All participants really enjoyed the passport page and the continents' illustrations. They commented that it felt new and different from what they've seen before.
- New use case revealed : Several of the participants expressed interest in using this app to find books from countries they were traveling to. In response, "Globe Trotters" was added as a target audience category and the personas were updated.