Book Nest Help:
Connecting people to their local bookstores through chat
Tools
My Roles
Usability Tester
UX Writer
Duration
Team
Thunyaphorn
Suphanatsin
Linn
Jackie
Book Nest Help: Book recommendation at your fingertips
About the App
Book Nest Help is a book recommendation chat service to help people discover the next book to read by answering a few questions and get information they need. This service directs people back to the physical stores to collect their ordered books, serving as a digital bridge connecting users and physical bookstores.
Make physical bookstore relevant again
The Ask
Fewer people nowadays go to physical bookstores to discover and explore books that they may be interested in. Instead, most of us turn to online platforms to browse and search for books. To bookstore owners, they need to find effective ways to re-engage people by leveraging digital tools to make the values of physical bookstores
being re-discovered.
Physical bookstores are no longer the primary source for recommendations
The Problem
Bookstores’ value for book discovery and exploration has not been fully utilized as most people search for book information and find books to read through online platforms.
Survey shows that 50% of people need book recommendations.
Connecting people to their local bookstore through chat
The Solution
Provide a book recommendation chat service to help people discover the next book to read by answering a few questions and get book information they need. Once people have their recommendations, they can either pay online by being directed to the bookstore websites and then go to physical bookstores to collect books, or directly pay and collect at physical bookstores.
Understanding how people find book recommendations
User Research
Since people go to physical bookstores less while searching online more, we did secondhand research on popular online platforms to understand how people find the next book to read. Then, we adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to dig deeper into book finding behavior. In total, we performed 3 one-on-one interviews and collected
22 surveys.
- 3 one-on-one interviews conducted
- 22 effective surveys collected
Key findings
Based on our interviews and surveys, we discovered that people do need book recommendations, with social media platforms and online reviews becoming their primary sources. Even though in the digital world, people still like to ask friends and family for book recommendations. A platform that can provide all the information is also preferred. We concluded that a chat service would be a good way to help physical bookstores to re-connect with people.
- People find book recommendations on social media
- People occasionally visit physical bookstores for books
- People prefer a single platform for all information they need
- People ask friends and family for book recommendations
How business can benefit from recommending books
Business Landscape
To verify the business benefits of our findings, which are the 2 key aspects below:
- 50% of people need book recommendations
- People still like to interact with others for getting recommendation
We use Business Model Canvas to analyze business values in
9 aspects, which are:
1. Key Partners - The outside companies or people you work with to succeed
2. Key Activities - The main tasks you must do to run your business
3. Key Resources - The important assets needed to make your business work
4. Value Propositions - What makes your product or service special and why customers would want it
5. Customer Relationships - How you interact with and support your customers
6. Channel - The ways you deliver your product or service to customers
7. Customer Segments - The different groups of people or businesses you aim to serve
8. Cost Structure - The main costs and expenses to run your business
9. Revenue Stream - How your business makes money from customers
Among these segments, the most important one is the "Value Propositions", which our app delivers 3 core values for users:
- Access to personalized book suggestions
- Get all information needed in one place
- A convenient way to get book recommendations via chat
What we can learn from similar products in our market space
Competitor Analysis
To understand how our service is positioned on the market, we conducted competitor analysis on 3 mainstream platforms providing book recommendations:
- Goodreads
A social cataloging website that allows users to search its database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can follow friends for recommendations. - Amazon
Personalized book recommendations based on previous purchases and browsing history, along with user reviews and ratings. - Tiktok
TikTok is increasingly becoming a popular platform for book recommendations, often referred as "BookTok."
How our app will stand out from others
5 Key Features
From the competitor analysis, we compared our key features with 3 mainstream platforms, in which we showcased that our chat service is the only app that provides all the features users need on the market.
- Reviews & Ratings
Our app provides review and rating information of books that users are asking for. - Book Purchase
Our app offers book purchase features and allows users to pay online or pay at collection. - Recommend via Chat
Users can have personalized book recommendations by answering 3 preference-based questions via chat. - Search via Chat
Users can directly ask for information about specific books they want via chat. - Single Platform for Information
Our app offers book purchase features and allows users to pay online or pay at collection.
Primary persona
Based on our research findings, we crafted a persona to represent the target audience who would like to use our chat service to have book recommendations.
Tum TheReader
“I love to read books, but I do not visit bookstores to have recommendations.”
Tum loves books and usually refers to online reviews to decide which books to buy. Although he visits physical bookstores from time to time, he does not think physical bookstores are a source to find book recommendations. For him, bookstores are just places to spend spare time.
- Would like to have credible sources to find book recommendations
- Need recommendations but do not go to bookstores for this
- Tired of cross checking multiple places to find all information needed
- Refer to online reviews or social media
- Rely on asking friends or family members to have book recommendations
- Only use single source to get reviews or recommendations
User flow & app structure
Below is the user flow of our app:
This is the structure of our app, total 8 screens:
Transforming user flow to prototype
Getting feedback
To test our prototype and to obtain a measurable outcome, we combined two methods, usability test and Kano Model. First, we asked 5 users to perform required tasks on the prototype, then answered a brief survey to score their use experience and shared an overall feedback.
After collecting all the testing results, we calculated the score for Kano Model and categorized users’ feedback
into 4 types:
1. Effectiveness: The effectivenss of the preference-based questions for recommendation
2. User Experience: Overall feeling of interaction, visual effects, engagement level
3. User Flow: Overall feeling of the process when using the app
4. Layout: Overall feeling of UI design and element positioning
- 5 usability tests conducted
- 4 types of feedback categorized
What we learned
Over the 3-week period, we learned to use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain insights from research, analyzed business values, applied measurable methods to verify usability, to name a few. During conducting user research, interviews and testing, I enjoyed uncovering users’ needs and found out what could be done better. This project was a rewarding journey for us to go through a complete process of realizing an idea to the actual prototype.