Bukum

Overview

Bukum is an app for book lovers that helps users catalog books into lists of their choosing, connect with other users, and swap books. The app focuses on user-centrism, providing users with a delightful experience.

Challenge

To create a user-friendly and user-centric app together with a brand that distinguishes it from its competitors.

Solution

Bukum is an app that allows users to connect and swap with other users who have a similar taste in books, explore and manage their books with lists of their liking.

Team

Self-directed, with guidance from mentor.

Tools

Sketch, InVision, Miro

Role

UX/UI Designer

Timeline

80 hours

Prototype

Research

Research Objectives

Identify issues with similar products.
Learn about user preferences/pains/experiences when it comes to reading/buying/renting books.
Uncover opinions regarding products like Goodreads.
Identify brand identity.
Discover features that would increase engagement.

Find the research plan attached here.

Secondary Research

To get familiar with the industry, I began by looking at what is out there already. Goodreads being the biggest book-related app, I spent some time looking at what users like and dislike about the app and other similar products. Googling, going on Reddit, and reading reviews on the app store gave me an idea of the audience and the key pains and successes.

From there, I could proceed with competitive analysis. I compared the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, which allowed me to understand what these apps specialize in and the different approaches they take. It helped me discover opportunities for a better design of Bukum.

I also created three provisional personas that helped me to humanize and solidify my findings-having these personas let me empathize more with the target audience of Bukum.

To have even a better understanding of competitor’s apps, I did a features comparison.

User Interviews

To get a deeper understanding of user experiences regarding reading and book-related apps, I interviewed 5 different participants. To gain insight, I came up with a list of questions I would ask them, mainly focusing on questions such as:

How do you discover books?
Do you track the books you’ve read? How?
What do you dislike/like about Goodreads or a similar app? Why?
How does reading make you feel?

Affinity clustering

Having completed the interviews, it was time to synthesize my findings. I wrote down the participants’ answers on sticky notes and used the affinity clustering exercise to bundle and group the information. This has helped me to draw connections between individual elements and develop ideas for potential solutions.

Not being 100% comfortable with the user interview findings and in need of more qualitative data, I decided to create a survey to fill in the gaps in my research. The survey results cleared up all the questions and gave me solid proof for potential solutions. Some of the key insights were:

The book swap feature interests people the most.
Having an active discussion thread is essential.
Users want to connect with other users who might have a similar taste.
Users feel curious and excited about reading.
Users want to search for books by author, genre, title, and mood.
Users like to get recommendations from trusted sources or actual people.

Define

User Persona

Once I had my research findings synthesized, I created a persona reflecting my insights. Veronica helped me to humanize the data and stay on track by reminding me of the problems I need to solve.

To further develop the persona and make it more real, I created an empathy map that was based on what my interview participants said and the observations I had.

Ideate

App map

Once I defined a standard user, I could continue with the next steps. The product roadmap helped me define user-centric feature priorities for the app. While the business model canvas solidified the idea behind what, why, and how this app will deliver. Finally, using an IA exercise of card-sorting to determine the importance of features on the app, I made an app map to cement the organization of screens within the app.

Task flows

Using the sitemap and research findings, I was then able to decide which task flows I would focus on.

Wireframes

By confirming which screens I would work on with the task flows, I grabbed a pencil and did the crazy 8’s exercise. After sketching out as many versions of screens as possible, I chose the best ones and proceeded with digitizing them on Sketch.

Profile

Visual Design

Logo

I started off by doing some rough sketches on paper as a warm-up exercise. I quickly moved on to Sketch to play around with some ideas on a digital platform.

It was clear to me that the logo with a small shelf was a good option. Therefore, I continued to develop that version.

I liked the orange version the most, as it is bright and uplifting- a mood I wanted to go with for the Bukum app.

UI Kit

I defined the visual elements in this document to have it all on one page for reference to design consistently.

High Fidelity Wireframes

With the UI kit's help, I applied the visual elements to the mid-fidelity wireframes, making some tweaks as I developed better ideas for the design along the way.

The rest of the screens can be explored via the prototype.

Usability Testing

To test the quality, the ease of use, and generally the whole design, I found 5 users who would participate in the usability test. As with user interviews, the criteria were similar: people who read books or use/used book-related apps. There were two tasks they had to complete:

Find and add “Robot Visions” to your swap reading list.
Swap books with another user via the notification/activity icon.
Summary of the findings:

There was confusion amongst users when they had to add a book to a reading list. 3/5 tried to use the “Add” icon in the lower navigation.
5/5 users successfully searched and found the needed book.
There was confusion amongst users when they had swap books via the notification/activity icon.
Most of the comments were positive- intuitive, easy, clear.

Feedback Grid

I created a feedback grid to synthesize my usability test findings. After grouping topics into groups of what worked, needed to change as well as questions and ideas, I brought to light these solutions:

Removed the “Add” icon from the main navigation.
Added a “Camera” icon to the search bar instead of having an "Add" button in the main navigation.
Highlighted the swap request notification to make it more clear.
Redirected the swap request notification to take the user directly to the other user’s “Swap reading list.”
Added a “Done” button to the Filters and Add to list screens.

Takeaways

Designing Bukum was a satisfying and fun process. It allowed me to design an app from scratch and focus on the features that matter. Given more time, it would be interesting to develop the “Swap” feature further and work on responsive design versions for tablets and desktops.