BookBagger
CASE STUDY
UX Design | Usability Study | Wireframes | Visual Design
BookBagger.com, a virtual bookstore that offers a wide collection at low prices and boasts built-in features to enhance the online reading experience. It is the solution for connecting higher educators and textbook publishers to college students, offering an online one-stop shop environment.
PROBLEM
In today’s higher education, cost is a vital factor. Price of tuition and textbooks continue to rise exponentially, making it harder for college students to afford them. College students, researchers, and readers looking for quick access and affordable online textbooks have various options available right now but often can not find one that best fits their needs.
SOLUTION
If textbooks are sold as digital files, textbook publishers can “mass-produce” books (as copies of one digital file) at extremely low costs. This allows for passing the savings on to college students through lower textbook prices for digital copies. Bookbagger.com offers the solution in a virtual bookstore environment with various useful and convenient features for the user to benefit from.
RESEARCH
I researched similar sites such as Zinio.com, Cengagebrain.com and Cafescribe.com which are prime web sources used to obtain online textbooks. We also looked up data to find targets for browsers and platforms. I talked to fellow college students and researchers about their experience and needs. We compiled a web version survey (link here) for our intended target users. Questions were developed based on the website’s planned features, intending to solidify or negate previous assumptions.
Link to Detail Research
User goals and needs
Our target user is the college student who wants to substitute a heavy, printed textbook for an easy-to-access and
cost-efficient digital format textbook. A great benefit to owning a digital file is sharing it with other students via
social networking communities around the world quickly. BookBagger.com will provide users with the ability to
search, download, manage, share, and blog within a community environment.
Our users will benefit from the blog community by reading about other user experiences. BookBagger.com will offer
an online storage so users can manage and read their digital textbooks anywhere at any time.
While there are many online digital textbook sites, BookBagger.com is unique in that it allows users to rent eReaders
from colleges and local libraries for a low monthly fee to access more than 5,000 titles.
Target Audience
Undergraduate and graduate college students and educators are our direct users. Parents buying books for their children will be the indirect users. Based upon the observations from the research and survey results, I defined the primary and secondary target audience as follows:
Primary Target Audience
• Male and Female* - Age: 18–50
• Race (Caucasian, African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Other)
• No kids in household (aged 0–17)
• Income of $30k or less
• College graduates
Web Application Objectives
We want to offer a site that will have a vast selection of the latest editions from major publishers. In addition, BookBagger.com will accommodate users with the following features:
• Option to buy/rent digital textbooks, chapters, specific pages or audio.
• Start study groups, share notes, and annotate features such as highlight text in digital textbook.
• Download digital textbook to Kindle, iPhone, iPad, and Sony’s eReader for increase portability.
• Download a free sample of the text.
• Subscribe to a 30 day free trial.
• List reviews and feedback provided by users for reference.
User Persona
Our team evaluated the three design directions for the mockup (link to the pdf here). We chose the logo, colors and form elements that worked together cohesively. We then came up with the final design to test with that incorporated the usuablity objectives and was visually appealing and functionally efficient.
Logo Design
Search for/Join a Study Group Page Flow:
Testing Summary
The clickable working prototype for the BookBagger.com site was presented with the instructions to several users to gather feedback on the important tasks to be tested. Their comments were useful in understanding what worked well and what areas needed improvement or were unclear. The summary below gives an overview of the tasks used in the testing and any modifications we did based upon the feedback we received.
Task 1: Register as a New User
Register as a new user to BookBagger.com.• The prototype is now directly linked to “My BookBag” page. Some users found that it was somewhat cumbersome to have to sign in after registering to avoid having to enter in their email address and password again.
• The word “Register” was in blue, which was confusing, so that text color is now changed back to black.
• The words “Join Now” are now made more prominent as suggested by the users.
Task 3: Customize Profile
Update user profile information on your account settings.• Some users found the “My Account” link a little difficult to find. It has been made more prominent now.
• Although users were able to complete this task easily, many were expecting to be taken to the “My Account” page when clicking on “My Account.” We have modified the prototype to link to the “My Account” page when the user clicks on “My Account.”
Task 4: Search for a Book
Enter search name by title, author, keyword, ISBN or publisher.• Some users found it inconvenient not to find a details page for each book when searching. We have linked all books to the book details page. Although it won’t match the book details for all of the books in the prototype, it will be less frustrating to our users while testing.
Task 5: Join a Study Group
Search for a study-group to join by group name, keyword or moderator name.• It took some time for some users to realize that they needed to go into “My Network” to search for a study group. Upon discussion, we decided not to make changes to this task. We looked at existing sites similar to BookBagger, such as cafescribe.com and zinio.com, and found similar terminology and page flow. “My Network” is a place to interact with a network of friends or groups. The users will feel more comfortable with this terminology as they continue to navigate the site.
Task 6: Download Reader
Download reader to your computer.• As suggested by the feedback, we added Windows 7 to the list of platforms suggested.
• We also added a link that says “Learn more about the reader here” for a first time user unclear about this function.
• Users liked the “No Thanks” on the download window for this task!
Task 7: Checkout
(After you search for a book and add it your cart), follow steps for the checkout process.• We modified this page to have only one address area to fill-in. Some users wondered why there was a home address as this is an on-line textbook application and does not need a shipping address. Now the user needs to enter only the address for credit card information.
• To make the prototype easier to test, we made all the books clickable so that any one of them could be added to the cart while checking out.
“There are three responses to a piece of design....yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” - Milton Glaser
Kimaya Firodia Kelkar is a talented and driven UI / UX and graphic designer based in the lovely San Francisco bay area. She strives to make her designs unique, usable and ones that convey the essence of the content.
Kimaya believes that creativity can be expressed in many forms and programming is one of them. She spent early years in her career designing algorithms and creating code!
She always loved all things art and likes to spend her free time composing Ikebana arrangements, taking photos, sketching, paiting, listenign to music, reading and traveling. She feels that using new media to achieve delightful visual communication is the key to successful design.
She looks forward to hearing from you!
hello@kimayafirodia.com