Bestil
2020
Bestil is a social book app designed for book lovers all around the world. Bestil combines the love for reading with the power of social networking, making it easier than ever to discover new books, connect with fellow readers, and engage in meaningful discussions about your favorite reads.
Systems Thinking
It’s not always how you build something but a more fundamental question of what to build. Through the process of Systems Thinking, my team and I explored how users can truly connect with reading and have a stronger motivation to read more and more consistently. Systems thinking in design refers to an approach that considers the interrelationships and connections within a system as a whole, rather than focusing on individual components in isolation. It involves understanding how different elements within a system interact with each other and how changes in one part of the system can impact the system as a whole. It creates an environment where the the entire design process is seen holistically with an emphasis on all the elements interconnecting and influencing each other.
There were 5 core steps taken:
Launching and Planning
Gaining Clarity
Finding Leverage
Acting Strategically
Learning and Adapting
Launching and Planning
In the Launching and Planning stage the main ground work is laid out for a successful outcome such as framing out challenge and trying to find the answer to: Is a system map REALLY necessary?
We formed goals we could achieve in some capacity and used complexity spectrum charts to answer the aforementioned question
Gaining Clarity
The main goal of this step is to develop the Guiding star and near star. To put in other terms: form a vision, an attainable goal to work towards. One which would be achievable in 1-3 years would be the most ideal.
We decided not to create a near star yet as we were still unsure on how our map would look like at all and our point of focus was still vague, hence we decided to work on it as we progressed while putting down some possible near stars. The fact of the matter is, we didn’t know exactly what we were tackling within the area of reading and came at it very generally with maybe an idea of the demographic: 16-26 year old students. Our Guiding Star or vision became simply a way to make people more motivated to read and have an easy access to books.
Exploring Forces
This was a step within gaining clarity for us. This is where a huge bulk of research was done, from statistics and articles to interviews and gathering as much data in general: quantitate and qualitative with a focus on the numbers and trends. The focus on the quantitative data is because it is much more definite and precise than subjective interviews, though we did have learnings from there too.
The focus on the quantitative data is because it is much more definite and precise than subjective interviews, though we did have learnings from there too.
This was all to find the enablers and inhibitors to reading and from there extrapolate the cause and effect of each. Yes, reading is going down but only for conventional books as reading in other areas such as articles, headlines, online comments, tweets, etc is going up.
After continuous refinement and work, narrowing our focus in key areas and cutting out the far, we ended up with a systems chart as follows:
Loops and Systems Mapping
This is the main step where we “connect the dots” and see what the potential causes are and how they all connect. By building loops of from all the previous steps, gaps could be closed and ideas expanded.
Example loop:
We build multiple such loops, each separate. After we created all the loops we could think of for all our inhibitors and enablers, we continued the work on Miro where we clustered the loops in themes and connected the themes. Using this, we build the Deep Structure of our System, also used as the core loop from which the rest of the systems map is build out of.
We quickly realised a core loop (blue) underpinned the entire systems. All other loops, motivators, influences were secondary to the core lifecycle of reading motivation.
Through thorough continuous iteration, changing variables, trial and error, experimentation and brain storming, the team and I consolidated the loops into a complete systems map.
Narrative and Testing
My team and I needed to craft the narrative of the systems map, explaining what people are looking at when they see it and with the intention that we will representing it to potential users to see if we need to make changes/missed out on something. In order to spend more time reading for pleasure you need time and a good book. These in turn are dependent on how you discover new books and how you spend your time on other forms of entertainment, work and hobbies.
As the deep structure we focused on book discovery.
As you read more, you are more encouraged to talk about those reading experiences and books with the people around you. This, in turn, creates an organic form of quality book discovery leading to a high rates of finding great books. The quality of the books you now read is higher and with it the reading experience gets better which reinforces the likelihood of reading more often and spending more time reading.
The two other main regions influencing the likelihood of reading are the environment you grow up in, including upbringing and education and the time you spend on other activities which compete with the time you have available for reading.
Good educational institutions tend to encourage reading more and create a positive outlook on reading which leads to reading more which in turn increases reading proficiency which allows you to get more from your education. This creates future opportunities for further studies and work.
Your upbringing is determined by a multitude of factors including parenting, environment and neighbourhood which can all be encouraging to reading more.
Time is a large contributor to the likelihood of reading. It is influenced by the following factors:
Need for entertainment
Time spent working
Hobbies
Time spent socializing
Tiredness
Which in turn also influence each other as they all compete for the same limited amount of time
Key Insights:
Book Discovery: The more you read, the more likely you are to find a great book (reinforcing loop)
Entertainment- A certain need for it and personal choice leads to how you satisfy it
Time- Entertainment, work and hobbies are competing over time
Work- The more you work, the more tired you are which leads to lower quality of work which leads you to work more for the same outcome.
The more you work, and the more tired you get the higher the craving for entertainment/alternative ways of spending time, and so depending on the form of activity, this can be relaxing or exhausting which can be balancing or reinforcing on tiredness.
The book makes or breaks the experience (reinforcing).
Likelihood of reading is dependent on upbringing, availability of books, reading experience, reader-friendliness of the environment and competing with other forms of entertainment.
It is highly influenced by the time available.
With the narrative, we set out to test our Systems map. We each presented it to two people each and found some very interesting insights such as missing an entire sphere of influence on reading: Mood.
Using this feedback we created what would become the final version of our Systems Map. Our core looped always focused on two aspects of reading: book discovery and the social aspect of talking about books, this never changed. We also had some ideas about spheres of influence on the likelihood of reading and it’s relationship with time, more specifically free time and how it all interconnects was very interesting to study. It was interesting seeing how if there is more free time available through some way, there’s a higher likelihood to read.
The final version also includes more influences on quality book discovery which we missed out on but was very important such as Podcasts, influences, courses and online video. Finding a new book can be much more complex than just someone coming to someone else with a certain book recommendation, it’s got a multitude of external and internal factors.
Finding Leverage & Evaluating Fit
This step focused on finding where within the system we could make the greatest amount of positive change with the least or no negative repercussions.
Steps taken:
Identifying the Systems architecture
Identifying areas for potential for change
Shortlisting and investigating the area’s with the highest potential and feasibility
Identifying Assumptions
Evaluating fit is highly solution based. It creates a foundation for a deployable solution. This possible solution is analysed for the potential effects it would have and helps consider other approaches and steps to take. This is still contextual to the system map as the way of analysis is through how the potential solutions effects would ripple through the map and influence it’s loops.
Navigation Design
Bestil was born out of the systems map. It would be an app with a focus on the social aspects and this was identified as one of the strongest external influences on motivations to read. The key aspect of my work on the app would be in its navigation design. The formation of its information architecture and aligning the designs layout to the mind map of its users were the core of the work I did. Information architecture refers to the structuring and organization of information within a system or product to enhance usability and findability.
The key steps and methodologies I took for creating the right navigation systems and information architecture in my designs were:
User Journey creation
Card sorting
Mindmapping
Tree testing
Wireframe development
A/B testing
Navigation and flow testing
From the Systems map and some workshopping with the team, we also decided on key features to include as part of the app. These were:
1. Personalized Recommendations: Bestil would integrate recommendations and suggestions not only on personal preferences but also shared preferences with friends. By suggesting books friends are reading, it can create an environment for organic discussions on books which could lead to more reading.
2. Connected Community: Community would be a corner stone of Bestil. By connecting like minded readers with each other and create grounds for discussing common topics such as authors, genres and such, new recommendations can be found and new favourite books discovered.
3. Reading Challenges: For those who respond well to external motivators, achievements, challenges and rewards can be incredibly motivating and validating. By offering a variety of ways to motivate users, there’s a higher likelihood of creating reading habits.
4. Virtual Book Club: Book clubs are a great way to meet new friends and bond over common topics. The book club would also serve as a social pressure to read the allotted chapters of the book so the users wouldn’t felt left out during discussions.
5. Reading Statistics: Seeing the reading statistics gives users a great view of their reading habits and trends. It can help them gain clarity on setting realistic reading goals.
6. Bookshelf Management: A simple but essential feature. Users can have all their books catalogued and organised in one place is important for keeping track of what to read, and what has already been read. It also gives users an idea of what to read next. By adding their personal collections, Bestil can also learn their taste and create contextual recommendations.
User Flow Mapping
The first of these steps was creating a user flow followed by a rough sitemap which we thought would make sense and would serve as a reference for the next step: card sorting. The user flow map helps in knowing the potential steps users would take to achieve their wanted tasks. The main difficulty in making a user journey is trying to accommodate all the different types of users or at least the average to a stream of steps and making sure nothing was missed out on as well as trying to create a solid skeleton/foundation for the rest of the methods to take place.
Card Sorting
Card sorting is a user research method used in design to gather insights into how users categorize and organize information. It involves presenting participants with a set of cards, each containing a piece of content, feature, or item, and asking them to group the cards based on similarities or themes that make sense to them. It is an effective way to align the expected mental model with the real mental models users have. This is a key basis of information architecture, not just hierarchy but layout and presentation. Throughout the card sort, it was important for me to understand users thinking and so for more unexpected choices I would ask questions, follow their line of thinking and understand why certain contexts are structured that way for them.
Mental Model
With multiple card sorts done, I consolidated all of them into a singular mental model. It was important to not only target the pages but the information which would be held within those pages as well. The key to this stage was patters. By finding patterns in the various card sorts and common connections, an interconnected mental model was built. It accounts for categories, sub-categories and the relationships the different pieces of information share between each other.
Tree Testing
In a tree test, participants are presented with a hierarchical representation of a website's or application's navigation menu (referred to as a "tree"), without any visual design elements. Participants are then asked to locate specific content or complete tasks by navigating through the tree structure. The goal of a tree test is to identify any issues or challenges users encounter in finding information or completing tasks, which can inform improvements to the information architecture and navigation design. The tree test was assembled using the made mental model. By using a tree sort, all the kinks of the initial mental model could be ironed out before further development.
Through continuous user tests, issues such as labelling and naming could also be cleared up for further legibility. It was interesting seeing all the data and the potential paths users took, it showed having multiple ways of reaching the same destination can account for more users.
Wireframes
With the data and correct mental model at hand, I went ahead with the wire framing. Transforming data and results into real prototyping was a key skill in this process. Feedback from previous rounds such as labelling came into play here such as the changing of “Reading Lists” into “Collections”.
I had a Toal of 7 tasks for the users to complete:
Finding and selecting book collections within the wireframes
Creating an opinion scale on how clear they believed the label Collections to be - retesting the label and being how well it fit now
Finding a book within the users own reading list within the wireframes
Asking how they felt about the bottom bar over the popular hamburger menu
Joining a book club within the wireframes
Asking a Yes/No question on if the app needed an Onboarding
Asking them to navigate from the book clubs page to seeing their own review history
These 7 tasks were finally followed up by an additional thoughts box which was optional. Each task was followed up with a differently structured question to remain interesting and break up the monotony of the exercise. The largest issue in this user research was the user flow to navigate between book clubs and review history. A key aspect missing was letting the users explore the wireframes before setting them to the tasks as usually during the first task, users would take extra steps to explore before setting out to the goal, decreasing the success of the first task.
The mix of questions with more data driven tasks gave me a good holistic view of what my participants thought and did and felt during this exercise helped me uncover the remaining weaknesses of the navigation and plug up the holes in the mental model as it’s a continuous journey of iteration. A more features are introduced and more fringe cases emerge the mental model and in turn the navigation and usability of the app have to permit for these cases. The design of Bestil would be never ending in a real world scenario of deployment.
Final Steps
With the use of rapid A/B testing during the final prototyping, the final designs were finished. With a clean, modern look which still pays homage to the books it contains, and light use of the brand colours, the app lets the content and the books be the main protagonist. It was important to let the books speak for themselves without he distraction of the apps design. With the information architecture matching as well as possible to user expectations, the experience should be seamless and invisible, the user not even noticing they are using the app to accomplish their tasks, they’re simply doing what they want.
