The Book Room App
Project timeline - March 4th - March 28th, 2025
The Book Room app was created to transform the way readers participate in and manage online book clubs. The goal was to create a standalone, creatively independent app that integrates with Amazon Apps while offering clear, structured, and engaging discussion features.
Through user research, we uncovered a clear need for a more structured, engaging, and customizable experience, something existing platforms struggled to provide. Our goal was to build a standalone app that maintained the convenience of Amazon integration while allowing for creative independence in both design and functionality. By focusing on features that support meaningful discussion and easy moderation, The Book Room offers a fresh take on the digital book club—organized, user-centered, and built to foster community
Overview
The Book Room was a comprehensive UX research and design process, grounded in user-centered methodologies. Each phase built upon the last, ensuring that design decisions were data-driven and aligned with user needs. The project involved a comprehensive UX research and design process, including:
User research through interviews and usability testing
Competitive and comparative analysis of similar apps
Affinity mapping synthesized research findings
Journey mapping visualized the user’s emotional and functional experience
Wireframing and prototyping to develop a more intuitive design
High-fidelity design iterations based on feedback
Understanding the Problem
The foundation of the project began with identifying the primary user pain points through our persona, Ava, a passionate book club moderator. Ava’s goal is to effectively manage both her local and long-distance book clubs, but her experience is hindered by several challenges:
Disorganized conversation threads that make it difficult to follow or maintain meaningful discussions.
Limited discoverability of book clubs that align with her reading interests or location.
Few opportunities to connect with other readers outside of existing platforms, making community-building a struggle.
These challenges highlighted the need for a more structured, intuitive, and socially connected platform shaping the core problem our app set out to solve.
Gathering User Insights
To gain a deeper understanding of user behaviors and expectations, we conducted seven in-depth user interviews along with usability tests on existing competitor platforms. These sessions revealed valuable insights into user frustrations, preferences, and goals when participating in digital book clubs.
The feedback was synthesized using affinity mapping, allowing us to organize recurring themes and identify patterns in user experiences. This process led to the creation of detailed user personas and helped clarify the key needs and pain points that would drive our design decisions throughout the project.
The User
Ava
Age: 64
Occupation: Retired Lawyer
Ava recently retired with her husband to Miami FL and is looking to continue her passion for book clubs alive. She loves being a hostess, and during her career she found that book clubs were a great way to escape the stress of her career. She is excited to start a new book club in a new area, but needs help finding people to engage with, and a way to maintain her existing book club back in Chicago.
Competitive & Comparative Analysis
To uncover meaningful opportunities for innovation and inform our strategic design decisions, we conducted a comprehensive competitive analysis of similar platforms in the book club and reading app space. Our goal was to understand what features users had come to expect, what gaps still existed, and where our product could meaningfully differentiate itself.
Created a Detailed Feature Comparison Chart
We began by mapping out key features across leading competitor apps, focusing on areas such as functionality, content organization, and user engagement tools. This visual comparison provided a clear baseline of how the market currently supports book club communities and where it falls short.
Captured and Analyzed Competitor Screenshots
We collected visual examples from a variety of competitor platforms and closely examined their user interfaces. This allowed us to assess which UI patterns supported user engagement and which created friction. By analyzing both strengths and weaknesses, we were able to spot common usability pitfalls and recognize successful interaction models.
Identified Strengths and Gaps
Through our review, clear patterns emerged. Some apps offered strong community-building tools, such as user forums and event scheduling, while others lacked intuitive navigation and clear content structure. These insights gave us a clearer understanding of where existing solutions fell short and where our app could deliver real value.
By identifying patterns, pinpointing gaps, and creatively exploring solutions together, we laid a strong foundation for a product that would feel both fresh and functionally robust.
MoSCoW Analysis
With a growing list of feature ideas generated through research and brainstorming, the next critical step was deciding what to build first and why. To do this, we applied a MoSCoW analysis, a strategic prioritization framework that helped us organize features based on their importance and impact.
Using this method ensured that our feature roadmap was grounded in user needs, while still being realistic about feasibility and development constraints. It gave the team clarity and alignment moving forward and ensured that we stayed focused on building an app that solved the right problems, in the right order.
Key overall analysis takeaways:
Structured Discussion Threads - Organizing conversations by topics and books.
Club Customization - Allowing moderators to personalize their book club settings.
Community & Discovery - Helping users find and join book clubs based on their interests.
Seamless Integration - Connecting with Goodreads, Kindle, and other reading platforms.
Strategic Direction - Standalone iOS App
Based on our research, we concluded that the most effective direction for the team is to develop a standalone app, independent of the Goodreads/Amazon ecosystem. This approach offers several strategic advantages:
Completely Original App - Allows the team to design the app based on user research and needs, without being constrained by Amazon’s branding, UI, or navigation standards.
Innovate Feature Development - Enables the integration of new and competitive features beyond those currently offered by the Kindle app, enhancing user experience and customization.
Broader User Appeal - Opens the app to a wider audience, including those who may not prefer Amazon platforms, allowing for a more inclusive and accessible user base.
Scalability & Flexibility - Facilitates future integration with other platforms such as Nook and StoryGraph, while allowing the app to evolve rapidly in response to user feedback.
The foundational research didn’t just influence what we were going to design—it shaped why we were designing it this way. It ensured that each feature we pursued had both competitive relevance and clear user value.
User Task Flow
Drawing from key research insights, we developed a task flow centered around Ava, a book club moderator who had expressed frustration with disorganized and disengaging discussions. The task flow was designed to support her needs by streamlining how she sets up and manages book discussions making it easier to plan topics, guide conversations, and encourage participation from members.
This structured approach aimed not only to reduce her workload but also to enhance the overall engagement and sense of community within her book club.
Journey Mapping
To better understand Ava’s experience, we mapped her user journey from the moment she encountered frustration with existing tools to the point where she felt confident and fulfilled in managing her book club.
This journey highlighted the emotional and functional challenges she faced, such as navigating cluttered interfaces and struggling to keep members engaged. By visualizing her progression, we were able to pinpoint critical pain points and uncover opportunities to redesign the app’s user flow in a way that would better support her goals and create a more enjoyable, efficient experience.
Fueled by insights from user interviews, usability testing, and a shared design vision captured in our team’s mood board, we began bringing The Book Room to life.
Drawing on our collective expertise in Figma, we translated research findings into thoughtful design decisions—balancing user needs with creative inspiration. This phase marked the transition from exploration to execution, where ideas took shape and the foundation for a meaningful, user-centered reading experience was set in motion.
High-Fidelity Mockup
The high-fidelity prototype of The Book Room app was meticulously designed to bring the user experience to life on a mobile platform. Rooted in the insights gathered during our interviews and usability testing, each screen was crafted to support natural, intuitive interactions. From the homepage to the moderator’s settings page, the flow was streamlined to reduce friction and enhance clarity.
Each visual element, from button placement to font choice, was carefully considered to guide users fluidly through tasks such as creating clubs, browsing discussions, and managing their reading library. The result was a mobile experience that felt familiar yet innovative, with a clean aesthetic and logical structure that made navigation second nature.
During usability testing, participants praised the app's clarity and ease of use. The organized layout and responsive design significantly reduced confusion and helped users feel confident and in control. By aligning design decisions with real user needs, the prototype successfully delivered a smoother, more engaging mobile experience.
Figma File
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