There is a market for Antiquarian books
We have e-Readers, tablets running e-Reader applications and portals providing online e-Reader books. However, no matter how digital the world gets, the affinity and love for paper books has never waned. Infact, statistics prove that equal number of printed books get sold each year. The paper book addicted readers are not just content with contemporary books but a niche group of them go a step further and acquire books printed centuries old, a.k.a antiquarian books. When I did a research of availability of such books, I found to my surprise that there are not many outlets that sell these books and those who do sell like online or brick & mortar stores, don’t seem to market them well. One such outlet is SonnyIdeker bookseller. This store has very rich collection of books dated to almost 16th century.
Through usability testing I realized that browsing through books for a specific book turned out to be a herculean task and more often than not, it ended up with zero hits. Conducted some research and based on my analysis, redesigned and performed usability tests to evaluate my results.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with SonnyIdeker bookseller in anyway. I have chosen this site strictly from academic and learning purposes.
Objectives:
Make the portal more user friendly and intuitive to find books with better search capabilities.
Build better checkout process
Take this opportunity to explore Research and Designer roles.
Users expect fast and efficient systems:
Started with identifying all portals that sell antiquarian books, both online and in-store and also the demographics of users who intend to buy such books. The intention is not just to understand why some books gets sold but also what users are specifically looking for.
One of the fundamental requirements of any portal these days is the ability to search and filter. Blame or appreciate Google, but we have to admit the fact that they got us addicted to super-fast and precise searching. Any portal or site is incomplete without a search field, and owners of such website shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t see any traffic. SonnyIdeker website though contains some search capabilities, it is painfully slow and to make matters worse, the list of inventory is provided as a downloadable excel sheet.
Portal does not provide an easier way of finding a book. Expects user to have some spreadsheet editing skills
From the usability perspective, this seriously limits the users from finding the relevant books as it assumes the user to have installed MS Office Suite and perhaps also assumes some level of expertise with MS Excel software. Research(es) of different kind of users behaviors’ (like Dwell Time, Bounce Rate etc) have proved that they quickly lose interest and move on if it takes more than few secs to keep them engaged and in a competitive world, losing customer’s is not great for business.
Getting an insight
Discovery User Interviews:
Initial research turned out very insightful with users falling into two distinct categories, safekeeping religious books in its pristine form and as collectibles. As part of this exercise I have interviewed few users to make them find a book and work through a transaction and also conducted a survey with some relevant questions as below…
1. Search for a particular book.
2. Sort books based on certain criteria like cost, genre etc
3. Get to the wishlist
4. Landing page experience
5. Ease of Navigation
Some of the feedback from users…
“list of inventory is part of some file”
“Excel sheet is stale”
“Can’t find what I am looking for”
“Can’t find image for any book”
“what are new additions”
Analysis - Quest on finding problem
Users do not trust the site
This map was great help in getting the views and grouping and classifying them based on user’s issues and recommendations.
Categorizing books
I completed card sorting to better understand possible Information Architecture (IA) improvements and learned that most of the users categorize based on book or author name of the book instead of year of publication, unless specifically looking for a particular book.
Identify issues - Users vs Business
This approach helped me draw parallels and also connect similar issues between users expectations and what the application provided. SonnyIdeker portal provided a way to sell antiquarian books but at the same time made it difficult for the users to search for a particular book. 2x2 Matrix also helped in setting up the priorities and criticalities like visuals of the book being bought, better way of sorting, driving traffic to the portal in right order.
Amy Watson is frustrated that...
The below persona of a SonnyIdeker customer depicts the experiences assimilated based on interviews and surveys and usability testing. Persona gave us the insight into the preferences of the user in their approach of finding a book and the difficult they faced in that process. It turned out that the needs and goals could not be met as hoped since…
· There was no filtered search for surgically searching a book
· The user search fields didn’t verify user inputs which lead to think the site is not professionally managed.
· Could not figure out the condition of the book since there were no visuals/pictures of the book.
· Quality of the books was questionable
· Couldn’t find any reviews on the site elsewhere
Envisioning the new idea with Prototyping
I scoped competitor(s) web sites and by cross verifying and slicing & dicing the screens, I came up with potential paper sketch that covers all mains screens. This approach helped me focus on layout rather than design aesthetics. Layout helped me in finalizing the navigation hierarchy of the flow by diverging into different possibilities and finally converging into one.
Morphing into a prototype
Low Fidelity design which after many iterations eventually became my prototype. During usability testing, quite a few requests from users. They wanted to see the condition of the book since they are very expensive/old, and also the description of the book. Requests likes these helpe me include and improve this functionality thereby providing better user experience.
Improved interactions
Performed usability testing as part of iteration process which lead me to refine the screens multiple times to ensure the user behavior is understood and captured properly
Landing page
The distinct feature of this screen is the visual representation of books and with multiple browsing and search capabilities. Also contains display for new additions
Better Navigation
Ability to select different books based on categories
Filtered Search
More granular search using different filtering criteria
Search Results
Results grouped by categories with visuals and description
Login though social media
Customers can use their existing ID and does not need to create a new ID
Seamless Check out process
Users can see all the items along with breadcrumbs to indicate the stage of transaction
Ways to Contact
Screen that helps in connecting customers with business and also register for newsletters
Your questions answered!
All the answers for frequently asked questions
Reflection of my work
To validate the changes, I reached out to initial interviewers and made them go through same task again. The redesign has met their expectations and the success rate of the tasks were achieved 100%. I was excited to have proven my design skills and this helps me implement similar design patterns for future projects.This case study covers the breadth of the workflow and also have scope to address deeper navigation issues.