Our Big Book | UI/UX Design | Case Study
Our Big Book, and innovative online book reading project by Ahmad Mujtaba
The Problem:
We all know how exciting it is to read Manga or comics. Every volume brings sheer joy and thrill.
But, the question arises, how can we make it possible for Online Book Reading and Writing? and make it innovative and entertaining?
In this project, my biggest challenge was to make it possible, and bestow a new soul to Online Book Reading and Writing by bringing new innovation and amusement to it.
The Solution:
For this challenging project, I adopted a design-sprint approach to get some initial directions and then progressed through the whole implementation. Evaluating sheer human-centered design approach was used to understand users' needs and achieve them in the best way possible.
My Role:
As the only designer for the project, I was a One Man Army 😌.
I worked on Market Research, User Research, and evaluation in the Empathy phases, and then I progressed through the prototyping and testing process.
Processes:
User Needs & Product Objectives:
" If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution. " - Albert Einstein
PERSONAS
From the insights I obtained from the project requirements, I was able to create 3 personas.
The personas I was able to create were:
1. Huzaima (Bachelors Student)
2. Vaniza (Book Reader/Student)
3. Sakhira (Story Writer)
Huzaima (bachelor's Student) was a close friend. He was the persona who would usually portray the customer with non-reader background and is willing to start on it. He focuses mainly on killing his time reading books and getting lessons from them.
Vaniza (Book Reader/Student) is an avid reader and takes pleasure in reading books as a hobby. Her focus is to get inspiration from good reads and implement those lessons in life. Interviewing her brings the idea of reader approaches to reading habits and what actually they look for. I got insights on the Cons of Online Reading and how I can solve them for a reader?
Sakhira (Story Writer) is an experienced writer and has her peace in writing marvelous stories and scenarios. Her main focus is to give a new insight to readers and drag them into her own fantasy world. Creating her persona makes a lot of things clear from the writer's perspective for this project.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP
Now as the personas were complete, I took a step further and analyze the approaches our customer would take to achieve his/her task, which in this case is reading and writing.
I identified the major stumbling blocks for users so that I could relate better to their problems and begin to see where a product or service might fit along the way to help the user.
Features & Content Requirement:
BRAINSTORMING
in the brainstorming process, I generate some ideas about how to address the issues and opportunities identified in the user research phase, and then reduced the devised ideas to those which seem more promising.
"The best solutions can sometimes sprout from the craziest sounding notions."
CONTENT STRATEGY
Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. Content strategy plans for valuable, findable, meaningful content. - Kristina Halvorson
As a designer, it was necessary to ensure that content is written, published, edited, repurposed, and archived at the right time, and for the appropriate audience.
Hence I communicated with our team’s content strategist extensively to ensure that the communication perfectly matches the design.
UX WRITING/MICROCOPY
Finally, I did the UX Microcopy for the project in this phase, choosing the most appropriate wordings to engage the audience.
Because WORDS MATTER!
Information Architecture & Interaction Design:
SITEMAP
In the Interaction phase, I made Sitemaps for the application to help me find my way through the website and show the hierarchy and navigational structure of the website.
Interface Design:
WIREFRAMES (SKETCHES)
PROTOTYPES
Information Design:
DESIGN SYSTEMS
MOCKUPS
Conclusion:
Making online Book Reading fun and engaging and motivating writers to write inspirational content was the biggest challenge for this project,
which I found I could overcome by including the socializing opportunities during design sessions.
Iterative user research and prototyping led to a final product that features amazing benefits for the writers who makes their readings worthy to be praised.
Our Web Application is currently in development phase and will soon be launched.
After the launch, I will work on improving interaction elements based on continued review feedback and analytic tracking.