Human Virtual Social Behaviour

Goodreads
Experience Design

Goodreads promises a place to share, discuss and primarily discover books. But does it really stand true to that promise? What are the deviations in the user experience that stop Goodreads from being the one pit-stop of all bookworms? Let's take a look.

The objective of this project was to understand the Virtual Social Behavior and redesign a website's experience based on those insights. In this case, I chose to explore the largest online catalog database of books: Goodreads.

BECAUSE I love reading! But one thing that hasn't really advanced side-by-side with tech is how books are shared and discussed. I really looked forward to studying this virtual yet not so virtual human behaviour.

UX/UI

HUMAN SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

NID

Year /

2021

Human Behaviour & Experience

Founded in 2006, Goodreads was acquired by Amazon in 2013. The idea came about when Otis Chandler (Co-Founder) was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. He wanted to integrate this scanning experience and to create a space where people could write reviews regarding the books that they read.

MISSION: Goodreads' stated mission is "to help people find and share books they love ... [and] to improve the process of reading and learning throughout the world." Goodreads addressed what publishers call the "discoverability' problem" by guiding consumers in the digital age to find books they might want to read.

Research route

Research tools

Polls and surveys

Netnography and Focus group Interviews

Studying physical experience of Browsing and selecting books

2. Behaviour associated with reading books

3. Psychology of reading books

1. Physical Experience of Browsing books

But wait..
who are we studying?
who are we designing for?

Goodreads is an open source library, and hence users don't need to register or access the website to get information off of it or to even rate books.
So GoodReads (GR) has all types of users! But the users who regularly use Goodreads to track their reading, share and discover books form a virtual cult of voracious readers.
Apart from them, there are casual readers and people trying to use GoodReads to get into the habit of reading

Heuristic analysis of existing GR

Onboarding and Data Collection

Analysis of the Website

Landing Page

Research Insights

Gaps in interaction with the website

The information blurb while interacting with a book covers other book tiles as well
The browsing feels mechanical and is not based on point-focus-think
Need to redesign shelving and investigation of books
Streamline features on the left panel, keep the center, extra right panel is confusing and adds to the clutter

Ask the user what they want, Build Trust

Onboarding: Ask the user what type of reader he is, all that he/she explores and personalise the experience.
Give more agency to the user to organise, rate and shelf books with convenience.
Display review threads over ratings. A discourse is more meaningful and reliable.
Introduce the option of following people rather than adding contacts. Will improve their feed, suggestions and the information in the algorithm to suggest.

Personalise the experience, Collect Data

Collect relevant information about the user's life, profile and their preferences
Customisable, unique user profiles: profession, likes, moods, writing styles, hobbies, interests, goals and choices
Option of anonymity, pseudo names and forming small groups
Time notifications according to reading activity