Bookround: Concept Book Club App
The Problem
Organizing a book club is chaotic. There are lots of individual tools but no single solution. And a finding book club is a challenge too. If no one you know is in a book club, where do you start your search?
The Objective
Create a tool to organize, manage and join book clubs.
The Solution
Bookround is an app to start a book club or find one with your friends.
Research
I interviewed 13 readers on their reading habits and experiences with book clubs. Key insights:
People want to join a book club with someone they already know.
Book clubs are as much about people gathering to socialize as they are about reading a new book.
People find book clubs by asking friends; otherwise they wouldn’t know where to look.
The Organizer
"To make my book club, I reached out to women I know who I thought would get along with each other and also enjoy reading and asked them for their interest."
The Member
"We talk about the book for 45 minutes and then we spend the rest of the time talking about everything else."
The Searcher
"I've always wanted to be in a book club. I joined one once but we never had a meeting."
Design
I identified three essential attributes to book clubs:
the gathering
the people
the books
Accordingly, I organized my information architecture around clubs, friends, and books.
Wireframes
I mapped user flows for club searches, club creation, and general dashboard interactions which would act as a homepage when logged in.
UI Style Guide
I wanted the UI to be shades of a single colour to ensure good colour contrast through the app.
I chose Monserrat for the typeface. It’s a personable, legible font with a variety of weights for flexibility.
People want to join a book club with someone they already know.
To meet this need, I created a way to share a book club with a friend without needing to be logged in. If you do have an account, when you search for a book club the app will show you if any of your friends are members.
User testing
I tested five participants on the following user flows:
finding and joining a book club with a friend
creating your own book club
Testing helped pinpoint when and where in the flow users would choose to invite their friends to join them on their book club journey.
Eager to see it in action?
The high fidelity prototype is built in Figma.