Bhuku Books
End-to-End Mobile App Design -
Children's Book Inventory and Book Review Application
Project Role: UX Designer - Team: Solo Project - Duration: 4 weeks, 80 hours - Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Background
Bhuku Books is a new mobile application for children’s book lovers that will help users track everything they own, books children have read, what children will read, and also everything they have loved so far. In essence, it’s quite similar to goodreads.com but it’s for books targeted at children whose ages range from pre-school to elementary school. The aim of the app design is to be user-friendly and clean so it can be inviting for anyone looking for literary resources for children.
Project Overview
Bhuku has started collecting data on popular books for children. Inspired by goodreads.com, Bhuku wants to give a more user-centric approach to their app, adding features and flows that make it delightful for people to use.
They want to use the full potential that a mobile app has, such as utilizing the camera to register books in a more automated way via optical character recognition (OCR), tracking children's reading progress, etc.
The main objectives of this project for Bhuku Books is to design a mobile app and develop Bhuku's brand. This project duration is 4 weeks.
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The key features for the mobile app include the following: the ability to sign up and log in, the ability to search for books using search and filtering, the ability to add new books manually through search and by using an OCR scanner, the ability to rate books and add comments, the ability to set the status of each book (e.g. “to read,” “currently reading,” “want to read”), and the ability to list all the books a user owns.
Research (1.5 weeks) - Primary/Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis & Persona Development
To develop a new mobile application for Bhuku Books, I needed to define the research goal and determine questions that need to be answered.
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Goal:
Gain insight regarding where and what parents/teachers are looking for when searching for literary resources for their young school-aged children.
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Questions:
1. Where do people search for book ideas for their kids? Are there any online or app resources regularly used?
2. What are the categories and genres of children’s books that people find that help in their search for finding appropriate books for their children?
3. What information do people look for when deciding which books would be good for their kids?
4. Would people be interested in getting book recommendations based on their own inventory/library? Are people willing to enter data into app?
5. How should user profiles be set up? Would creating achievements in user profiles have value? ​
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I began with secondary market research to familiarize myself about the industry of literary resource apps. I chose the following research methods they allowed me to understand literary resources in an efficient manner.
1. Market Research - to understand more about what literary resources apps offer as well as exploring other apps (Netflix, Amazon Prime Kids, etc…) that can be a source of design inspiration with regards to content structure and navigation scheme.
2. Competitor Analysis – to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of competing book reading apps, book review apps and other literary resource apps.
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Here are some trends regarding literary resources:
1. Features of more successful home library catalog apps include easily collect bibliographic information, group books into categories, read and update reviews and keep track of what you still need to read.
2. Home library apps are evolving to include the ability to scan barcodes and input references using a phone’s camera to assist library cataloging. Can also input titles from websites that have ISBNS. Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/grad-hacker/cataloging-your-library-goodreads#sthash.Hzr1kFZ5.dpbs
3. Many libraries are now using existing social media systems for book recommendations as a way to
engage with their users and move into the new work of social book recommendation - Source: https://www.infotoday.com/ onlinesearcher/extras/Herther--GoodReads--Social-Media-Meets-Readers-Advisory.pdf
4. Federal law (COPPA) requires that a kid be at least 13 years old to sign up for any social networking site—including Goodreads. As a result, creating a Goodreads for kids is not as simple as copying what works for adults and adding content filters for kids.
5. The operators of these sites must follow strict guidelines to remain COPPA complaint. Most of them do so by having parents or teachers sign up directly for their programs. Those parents and teachers can then add a classroom or family to their own account and add the kids as they see fit. This meets the requirements of COPPA (if done correctly) because it A) does not require personal information from children and B) ensures that the child has permission to sign up by a parent or guardian
6. 3 main “goodreads for kids” - Biblionasium, Dogo Books & Spaghetti Book Club -
Source: https://bookriot.com/goodreads-for-kids-alternatives/
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Main takeaways:
1. Successful features include grouping books into categories, ability to view and add book reviews and tracking reading status.
2. Using phone's camera to assist in book cataloging is increasingly more common.
3. Using social media for book recommendations is increasingly more common.
4. Under federal law, children under 13 years of age cannot have login accounts. Adults will need to be the owners of account log ins.
5. In addition to Goodreads and its competitors, other competitors to consider include web applications Biblionasium, Dogo Books and Spaghetti Book Club.
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My competitive analysis includes direct competitors such as literary review sites and apps that include children's books, kids book clubs, public libraries and chidlren's ebook/audiobook apps.
Competitor Analysis Key Takeaways: ​
1. Categorized books for easy search is must.
2. Reading tracking and rating/reviewing books are expected features.
3. Would be nice to categorize books based on children's ages and/or reading levels.
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My primary research involved conducting interviews with people who have or work with young school-aged children and are interested in kids' literary resources since they are the target demographic for the Bhuku Books app.
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​Insights from the in-person interviews (research questions revisited):
1. Where do people search for book ideas for their kids? Are there any online or app resources regularly used?
•A lot of people look for casual reading books especially for older children. As children grow older, the purpose of books becomes more academic. People look for books to read to the kids and books the kids can read independently. People find books a lot of the time by word of mouth or school recommendations. For many people, the social influence can be a significant factor when sourcing books for children. Online apps and websites that people use to find books include the local library online, Google, Amazon, or wellreadkids.com.
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2. What are the categories and genres of children’s books that people find that help in their search for finding appropriate books for their children?
•The main genres parents seek for their children are fiction (including historical fiction), science, history (simplified), geography, songs/poems for very young children. Some parents search by topics (animals, nature, vehicles, dinosaurs, space, mummies, pirates, ninjas, space, animals, weather, famous people, etc…). Many books children like to read relate to TV characters they are familiar with. Some children like to read books in a series to continue on with familiar characters. Some parents for books that appropriate for child’s grade level/reading ability.
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3. What information do people look for when deciding which books would be good for their kids?
•Parents would love to have book recs that have already seen. Adding past inventory sounds too time consuming and not likely to be done. Most parents will want to see recs based on what books they find.
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4. Would people be interested in getting book recommendations based on their own inventory/library? Are people willing to enter data into app?
•Parents would love to have book recs that have already seen. Adding past inventory sounds too time consuming and not likely to be done. Most parents will want to see recs based on what books they find.
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5. How should user profiles be set up? Would creating achievements in user profiles have value?
•A single login with the ability to have multiple profiles (for multiple children that will need different book recommendations) would be ideal. Creating achievements could be helpful in keeping older children motivated to read (can also help parents keep track of the kids’ progress to give rewards) – not everyone would use this feature.
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The provisional persona (target customer) developed as a result of the research is a Bibliophile Parent who wants to impart a love of books and learning onto her children. She wants to be able to conveniently find great kids' literary options, track her kids reading, recommend and learn about books from her friend network.
Interaction Design (1.5 weeks) - User Flows & Wireflows
After the research phase, I started to the interaction design phase by defining the two most important user flows when interacting with this new app.
User Flow #1: Locating information about a book using search and filter functions.
User Flow #2: Writing a book review on an already completed book.
With the user flows defined, I created a UI requirements document to highlight the different screens, features and interactions that need to exist within the application.
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Based on the information thus far, I created a wireflow schematic to diagram the interactions of the different pages within the Bhuku Books app. The annotated wireflow you see below was updated based on three rounds of feedback.
Iteration and Implementation (1 week) - Prototyping & Usability Testing
UI Design (1 week) - Brand Development, Logo Design, Style Tile, & UI Kit
Running in tandem with the interaction design, I developed branding. After going through several design and color combination ideas, I went with a simple book that can be scalable for the logo design and focused on a light blue with white background for the color aesthetic. The light blue color was chosen since it is a calming color. Blue is also known to be considered reliable and trustworthy. The white background is chosen to provide a clean look and let the books that will be featured on the app to shine. The goal of the app is to be an inviting, reliable source for children's literature. That goal was taken into consideration when developing the color aesthetic, logo and design for the Bhuku Books app.
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Once I created the logo and decided on branding aesthetic, I developed a style tile to provide a sense of what the website will look like once the UI design is applied.
With the brand elements designed, I developed a UI Kit, pulling components from the wireframes and aligning them with the Bhuku Books brand aesthetic.
To make sure Bhuku Books' app was intuitive to use and made sense based on the project's goals, I created a mid-fidelity prototype in Figma and conducted 3 usability tests. With these tests, I was able to observe how participants navigated through the different pages, how they engaged (or didn't) with the app design, and whether they had any feedback on the design.
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The results of the usability tests gave valuable insight into which features needed to be updated, re-organized and highlighted. I received feedback regarding the design layout, buttons and text features.
View the Usability Test Results
After receiving feedback and with a couple more design iterations, I updated the prototype with the UI components applied.
Next Steps
Now that the design has been through a few more iterations, I can conduct additional usability tests and make UI improvements where necessary before handing it off to a development team.
Finding and Reflections
Designing an end-to-end mobile application was a rewarding challenge. As a parent with a young child whose education is important to me, this was very meaningful for me to design a resource application that can be helpful for parents and teachers. Through this experience, I learned more about what the process of understanding how to take prospective users' needs and hopes for a resource application like this and translate that into a clean, inviting design.
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One of my favorite aspects of this project the interaction design. I was very excited to explore how I was going to take what I had learned from my research and translate into a functional and appealing design. Another aspect of this project I enjoyed was the application of the UI design. It was exciting for me to see the vision in my mind come to life.
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The biggest challenge for me was determining which features I needed to include in this app's initial design and which features I could possibly leave for a later version. I discovered through potential user interviews what people's priorities and preferences were for a resource application like this. For example, having the OCR scanner was more preferred than gamifying reading tracking (by adding badges/accomplishment goals). I also discovered through research that a young child is not lawfully allowed to have an account; this discovery certainly affected the app's account and profile design. This experience has given me a better perspective of how thorough research and understanding potential users can really drive design. If I had to do it again or had more time for this project, I would possibly research and explore different design layouts. I would also ask users more questions about their thoughts regarding the use of color and what makes logo design memorable/meaningful.
I hope to use this experience as a springboard for working on future projects either in the education space or in mobile app development.