Bookster : Swap, sell, & buy books nearby
Bookster is a mobile app that enables users to manage, exchange, and buy or sell pre owned books. Existing solutions were facing usability issues that led to a decline in user satisfaction and engagement. My goal was to design an app, improve its UI/UX to provide a seamless, intuitive, and enjoyable experience for users.
Freelance Project
Sep 2020 - Oct 2020
Product Design, User Research, Usability Testing
Information Architecture, Design System, UI/UX Design, Prototype
Figma and Adobe CC
Challenge
Read or used books are often archived, given away, lost, and forgotten about due to excessive hoarding, Making it difficult for readers to get rid of the books they no longer need, and add books they’ve on their wishlist but not on their bookshelf.
The current approach of exchanging books via apps have a major flaw, Users often come to search for the book they want and if they don't find anything worth exchanging for their book they simply quit the app and never return.
Problem Statement
How might we help book readers replace their unnecessary books with necessary ones?
And through a series of user research, competitive analysis, and engaging user interviews, I uncovered key pain points in the online book exchange process and brainstormed creative solutions to address them effectively.
Swipe to Swap, or Buy a Book
Allows users to swipe right on a book if they wish to swap (exchange) it with their selected book, or swipe left if they want to see the next option.
If the user wishes to buy a book from the seller, they could send a buy request only if the owner has put that book for sale.
Filter the stack of books based on location and interests, such as genre, author, language, and other preselected interests.
Managing and Filtering Swap and Buy requests
See all the swap requests other users had sent when they swiped right for your book.
Search and filter swap requests by nearest first, recent first, popularity, or relevance of the text search of a book title, genre, or author.
Check out all the buy requests with the same text search and filters as swap requests but with additional price filters for sorting them.
Ease of maintaining Bookshelf
Add books to the bookshelf by searching or scanning the barcode of the book, also let users hide books from others if they don’t intend to swap or sell those books.
Let users add a review, rating, cover type, year of publication, and the purpose for which they are adding the book, swapping. or selling?
If the search or scan to add a book fails to find a match, the user can fill out a form to add (upload) the book manually.
Wishlist for a better-curated recommendation
Adding books to the wishlist would help in getting notified about the book once it is added by someone nearby.
Wish-listed books and similar books would appear first at the time of swiping.
Top recommendations are based on the user's interests and other previously wish-listed books if any.
Chats with at a glance swap, sell, or buy details
Helps users always know what kind of match they’ve with another user
Filter to sort matches and messages by recent nearby, unread, buy, sell, and swap. Users can also search for a book title, genre, author, or the name of a person for a precise search result.
Users can update the bookshelf and wishlist once they’ve successfully swapped, bought, or sold a book from the chat itself.
Manage books by collections or users (WIP)
This will help users create multiple collections for themselves and use them at the time of swapping
Another use case could be for parents to add their kid's books as a separate collection
With each collection a certain filter can be added to make the process of switching between collections easier
Competitive Analysis
I conducted an in-depth analysis of three competing apps, focusing on the user experience for exchanging, buying, and selling books as both a new and returning user. To gain deeper insights, I also reviewed and compared negative feedback from the App Store and Google Play Store. This helped me pinpoint the most common struggles users faced and identify features they were less enthusiastic about.
1st App - BookSwap
The Good
The app has good bottom navigation for users to switch between the kind of actions they would like to take.
The design is simple and uses repetition of book layout to familiarise users with the kind of actionable buttons over each book.
Intuitive settings page design, accessible from other pages via FAB.
The Bad
Overall UI is outdated and not as modern, and clean, Color contrast can be improved. The top nav background image throws off the UI.
The requests page is a bit overwhelming and creates confusion in understanding which book is exchanged with what.
Users can only exchange books not buy or sell them in case the request is declined they can’t request to purchase them.
2nd App - Swappy Books
The Good
The app has a simple, modern, and clean design with big headings and colors with high contrast.
Has the option to scan for the book’s bar code to add it to the bookshelf.
Navigating through different books is smooth and the book details page is well-designed with a good hierarchy among elements
The Bad
No filters or search is there for controlling the feed of books nearby.
Showing Books in your neighborhood over a Map raises privacy and security concerns
There’s no selling option for users in case they don’t want to exchange any book but only sell it.
3rd App - Bookswap Store
The Good
Multi-language support for diverse users to add different languages to books.
The top navigation has easy to access book related actions and changes according to the type of page the user is on.
Bottom navigation helps in navigating the app with ease.
The Bad
The explore page design is just a list of books and doesn’t have any filters or sorting by which a user can curate a search result.
The user doesn’t have a proper request page to check on the other user requests.
It is not clear what books are exchanged with other books or if there’s a buying option for the user.
User Interview and Insights
I conducted interviews with 10 participants, aged 18 to 40, from diverse occupations to uncover their pain points, goals, and overall behavior when exchanging, buying, and selling used books. Below, you'll find the key insights gathered along with the questions that guided the discussions.
User Personas
From the interview insights and observations, I created two comprehensive user personas that highlight their goals, pain points, behaviors, and motivations. These personas form the foundation for designing user-centered solutions that align with their needs
Meredith, 21 ( College Student )
Monica is pursuing political science and loves to read historical fiction as well as non-fiction books. Her wishlist for such genres of books is endless. She enjoys learning new languages such as Spanish. And is also preparing for competitive exams which would help her get into a good college for her Master's degree, but those books are quite expensive if imported and the delivery time could vary from weeks to even months. She also has some books from her junior college that she wishes to sell away as the money could help in purchasing competitive exam books.
Goals
Read more historical fiction and nonfiction books buy competitive books at lower prices and get them as soon as possible.
She wants to sell her junior college books to get money for competitive exam books.
Buy second-hand competitive books that already have highlights on important topics and solve problems with notes.
Maintain her book wishlist and get them as soon as they’re available.
She would like to know what books are nearby for her to swap or buy.
Pain Points / Frustrations
Books she liked to have were always out of stock and she misses them whenever they’re stocked back.
College books are often very expensive and are used less after the semester or the term is over.
Get frustrated about not finding out the genres and language of the book she was hoping to buy or swap.
Creed, 32 ( Software Developer )
Jake is a software developer at an MNC who likes to read, write, and watch movies with his kids in his free time. He reads story books to his kid in bed as well as takes time to help them with their school assignments and homework. For his reading, he likes to explore mystery books by Stephen King. He has lots of books on his bookshelf and is looking forward to either exchanging or selling them to get new books in return. He does have a few books on his mind that he wants, but he loves a good book recommendation whenever it is offered.
Goals
He’s interested in exploring mystery and thriller books, especially by his favorite author Stephen King.
Wants the latest and updated school books for his two kids in every grade.
He wants to sell or swap old books from the previous grade with someone nearby.
Prefers to have hardcover books and meet in person to swap, sell, or buy books.
Pain Points / Frustrations
Faces a lot of difficulty in finding his desired books and is not able to find people to swap his books with.
Doesn’t want to mail books at the time of swapping or selling them as the fees for shipping heavy books are higher at the time of mail.
Doesn’t always get the updated syllabus books for his kids.
User Flow and Information Architecture
To define the scope of the entire application, I began by mapping out the Information Architecture to establish a clear structure for the app’s content and features. This process ensured that all key functionalities were logically organized and easily accessible. Additionally, I designed an ideal user flow, illustrating the smoothest and most intuitive journey a user would take to achieve their goals. Together, these steps helped create a solid foundation for a user-centered and seamless app experience.
Product Style Guide
Through mood boarding, I captured Bookster's desired look and feel, drawing inspiration from earthy tones like beige, off-white, and woody textures to evoke the warmth of used books and traditional bookstores. This led to a color palette that aligns with this essence.
For typography, I chose Nunito for its playful yet clean sans-serif style, ensuring readability with character. To enhance the interface, I incorporated shadow styles for card elements, adding depth and visual interest.
Iterative Design
Based on the research findings, three key flows were identified as essential for delivering a seamless user experience in exchanging, buying, and selling used books. These flows underwent several iterations, incorporating feedback from participants and peers to ensure they effectively addressed all user needs.
Exploring and Finding Books
The first iteration had a simple list of books that the user can check out more details on its detail page and then select a book from which the user wants to exchange it.
There was a search and a few other filters users can use to curate a search result based on their liking.
Although the list of books gave more options to users to select a book from, it wasn’t clear which books were closer to the user and it also created confusion and hesitation in making a buy/exchange request for a book.
Hence in the second iteration, I added a map with the book's location which would give the user the location of that book
On further testing this with real users I found most of them weren't comfortable with sharing their location.
An approximate area of location could still do the job and setting preference for that in the settings did make some users comfortable. But seeing the area on the map was something users still weren’t comfortable with.
Therefore in the third iteration, I went for one book at a time view with a horizontally scrollable list of all user's books that had higher chances of getting a match just below it.
This solved all of the user problems as it had crucial information such as distance, genre, and filters to curate the search result they wanted.
Users could view which books had a higher chance of matching and swipe right to send a swap request with a selected book from their collection or swipe left to skip to the next option.
Managing Swap and Buy, Sell Requests
Users need to know what kind of requests they’re getting for their books and how they can manage it, In the first iteration the approach was simple and all the swap and buy requests were displayed together for easier access but then in the second iteration.
I included tabs based on the type of match, along with a few elements and label changes over the card it made it easier for a user to understand which books were getting exchanged with their collection of book.
In the third iteration, I added a search where users can search genres, authors, or book titles to check if they had any matches or multiple matches for the searched book. Filters as well for the user to sort the requests by distance, popularity, and recent and for buy requests, the additional filter of price helped the user in managing their requests.
Matches and messages with requests info
In the first iteration, recent matches and chats were more focused on the match and having a conversation over that single match, this changed in the second iteration as one user could easily have more than one match and can pick up or deliver multiple books if they’re matched with the same person.
Hence more details were added to the match card like from which user what sort of match request the user has received, this information was then also carried forward as labels with a count depicting in which conversation the user is talking about the kind of request(s) and same with more details was also shown as a horizontal scrollbar, reminding the user about the request type with a little more details.
In the third iteration, a minor but important change was added to update the bookshelf and requests associated with that book. With just one confirmation from the user, all actions related to the book will be performed such as adding to the bookshelf or removing it. deleting/rejecting all requests associated with it, saving users from the tedious task of managing them.
The Final Product and Prototype
Created entirely using Figma's Smart Animate, this prototype covers the entire user flow for a new user. It includes onboarding, adding and managing books, exploring and swiping through books to send buy and swap requests, managing buy, sell, and swap requests, chatting with matched users, and updating the bookshelf once an exchange is confirmed.
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
This was my first self-taught product design project, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to navigate the entire process of strategizing and designing the user flow from start to finish. It was an invaluable experience that taught me a great deal, and the gradual learning curve provided these key lessons:
In the early stages, I explored numerous options to find the best solution for my users, leading to multiple iterations to ensure every aspect of the app was purposefully designed. While I had hoped to dedicate more time to refining the UI and color scheme—since my vision for the app initially didn’t align with my expectations—I still invested significant time and resources in research to continuously improve the user experience.
Thank you for going through my journey of designing this app, please feel free to get in touch for any queries or just for a chat on Linkedin, email or any other social handle provided.