After finishing the UX Design course at Mergo (July/2018 – São Paulo), the professor Edu Agni offered an opportunity to advise students that wished to conduct a project on their own.

Challenge
How to create a new social experience of exchanging used books through technology?

Process Conducted
Pre-Empathy > Empathy > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test

1) Pre-Empathy

Research in news sites and blogs to understand book sharing and what business are already working on that. After this step, a CSD matrix was done to organize the main points of the project.

2) Empathy

Making of a Google form to understand the reading, buying and exchange habits of readers. The answers allowed for the creation of three different reader profiles: the Careful Reader, the one that values and cares for their books; the Moth Reader, the one that is interested only in the content, with no attachment to the physical book; and finally the Digital Reader, the one that reads mainly e-books in mobile devices.

I created a semi-structured interview to understand reading habits, what the reader does to the books when they´re finished, if they use book exchange social media or if they´ve ever exchanged books. I found it difficult to arrange candidates for the interviews in a short time. To solve this issue, I made “Wanted” posters, attached them to street posts in Rio de Janeiro and took photos. I posted the photos on Instagram as if I had found the posters curious and did not know exactly what they meant. I got the return I was looking for, as many people were interested and reached out to schedule their interviews. Seventeen readers that fit on of the three profiles were interviewed.

The personas were based in the characteristics of each profile focusing in the following aspects: interests and motivations, daily tasks, frustrations, background, and main tasks and goals.

After defining the personas, I followed with the user journey to identify the contact points and opportunities within the experience of buying, reading and exchanging books.

3) Define

Problem: readers (of printed and digital books) feel the need to share the reading experience with others, but have difficulty finding people with the same tastes and affinities in the literary universe.

Goals: Promote the interaction and exchange of books between readers in an accessible and economical way through technology.

Target Audience: People that view reading as a moment of pleasure. This public enjoys exchanging books and recommendations. They wish to interact more with other readers.

The solution to this problem was an app that allowed exchanging books. Its main functions are: creation of a profile with a profile photo (the app suggests that the user post a photo with their favorite book), a library with current readings and a history of read books, finding other readers (social media), the exchange of books, and the wall of the reader (a news feed with the main events in the literary universe). Furthermore, the app presents a virtual currency called Bookado. With each exchange, the user receives Bookados that may be traded for discount coupons in bookstores and sites.

4) Ideate

In this step, I elaborated a task-flow focusing on the exchange of books inside the app with the goal of creating a more efficient way for the user to exchange books with another reader. The flow was designed starting from the app sign-up all the way to the exchange confirmation along with the Bookado credits;

5) Prototype

The drawings of the screens were done on paper. At first, I inserted colors, but afterwards, I realized they were a distraction in the usability test. At this moment, the main goal was to focus on the flow and functionality to understand if the app allowed the used to easily perform the exchange. The paper screens were photographed and the navigation flow for the test was created.

6) Test

I asked five readers and social media users to take the usability test. I gave them three tasks: sign-up, exchange a book, and use the exchange credits (bookados). Of the five users, four were able to finish all of the tasks and said they would use the app.

After the test, I presented the project at Mergo for a group of UX Design specialists to receive feedback and understand what could be done to perfect the app.