Book Master - abhinav

Defining The Background And Context

While I was doing my U.G. degree I received a lot of books from my college as the years passed by the books were taking over more space in my living room as there was no place left on my shelves to keep them. These books were so new and were almost untouched for almost four years that if you open them you would know what a fresh book smells like.

So I wanted to sell these books so that I would have more space in my living room and shelves. Through which I would be able to buy something useful with that money.

I tried selling my books in my locality and was shocked to know that they were not treating them as a book with high standards and were only considering them as a bunch of papers together.

Which got me inspired to build an online platform to buy, sell, and rent used textbooks for every student across all the professions they were pursuing.

Early Research And Self Reflection

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT

The graph provides us with the exact picture of the rise of textbook prices every year in the market.

The major factor that leads to this rise in cost is the demand for them in the market.

Some colleges even force their students to buy books from them.

Upon self-reflection

The cost of education is getting higher every year.

Students of few professions don’t really use textbooks and are depending on the alternatives.

So I drilled deeper to focus on professions in which the students had to buy textbooks necessarily and the cost of textbooks is higher.

Through this, I pivoted to the idea of helping medical students buy medical textbooks.

Defining The Problem

How might we help medical students buy used medical textbooks and study materials efficiently?

What Was My Role?

Since this was a learning project that I did individually out of my interest. I got to were multiple hats as per requirements to complete the project.

Understanding The Context And The Customers

So this gives me a clear picture of two types of medical students that will be using my product for their different needs. This should be taken into consideration before creating the product.

After doing secondary and primary research with 2 possible customers these are my understandings and insights from the research.

Meet Akshay

He needs to buy books and study materials on his own.

Some of the things Akshay says, does, feels, and thinks are

Experience Of Buying Books

Experience map of a medical student who needs to buy all books on their own.

Meet Akshay

She gets all the primary books from her college but needs to get some additional textbooks and study materials for references.

Some of the things Preethi says does, Feels, and thinks are

Experience Of Buying Books

Experience map of a medical student who gets all the core books from college.

Insights Captured

People especially in India use pirated materials to study.

Medical students need books to refer back to the future stages.

Some medical colleges force their students to buy books from them.

They tend to buy the book in bulk if it’s available as it saves time.

In most instances, medical students don’t sell their books as it acts as a reference tool in the future.

Photocopies and PDFs are used for temporary solutions during unavoidable situations.

Analyzing The Market

So I analyzed a few competitors out in the market space to understand how are they solving the problems and provide a view of what I like and don’t like about them from a user’s perspective.

These are my learnings from the market

The products and services were too broad and do not have a single specific customer segment.

The big players like Amazon are providing books free of delivery charges or very minimal trying to form a behaviour out of the customers, especially in India.

The products have their singular benefits that customers find interesting but don’t have a collective advantage.

Some of the products have their wallet to which money is transferred after the user sells something.

What is missing?

The personalization of the user needs.

The localness of providing notes and answers to the students.

A place where the users can buy all the required material as a whole set for every year.

Adaptation to the customers based on different locations.

What Is The Goal And Vision Of The Product?

To create an efficient way for medical students to buy their textbooks.

The Solution I Arrived Upon

Creating a flexible online platform that helps medical students buy medical textbooks and other study materials in a bulk or individually.

Features Of The Product

These are the core features of the product that I’m concentrating on at this stage for the validation and MVP.

Customizable yearly book and study material sets: Add, remove and replace any book or study material from the pre-made sets. Offers a lot of flexibility to the users.

Personalized recommendations: Users get recommendations of the books and notes commonly being used in your college.

Request unavailable books or study materials: Users can submit a request for the requirement of the book or study material they need.

Scenarios In Which Product Comes Into The Picture

“I need to buy books and study materials for a whole year”

“I need to buy a reference book”

Constructing The User’s Journey

Created user flows for two different types of users. This helps me get a clear idea of how people with different needs navigate through the product.

User flow chart of a medical student (yearly book set purchase)

User flow chart of a medical student (individual book purchase)

Home Page

This acts as a core element through which all the primary navigations occur. So I wanted to nail down the home page. The overall layout was easily attained but it took me a lot of iteration on changing the information being provided.

Provided clear categorization so that it is easier for the user to where the user to understand. I applied the common pattern of how we search for books in other places to enhance familiarity.

Providing personalized recommendations on the textbooks and other study materials suggested in the users college.

Study Kit For The Year

We as humans are wired to be energy efficient instead of searching out individual books medical students can buy a whole study kit in an already put together format for a year including the textbooks and other study materials.

From looking at the user’s perspective I figured that it also needs to be customizable for the user to replace or remove the unwanted materials and textbooks.

This study kit page also had to be clearly categorized on various levels from subjects to the type of study material to prevent users from getting confused.

Request Unavailable Medical Books And Study Materials

When the required textbooks or study materials are not available the user will feel disappointed which leads to frustration, as a result, the user eventual stop using the product. In order to prevent that happen, I have created a request feature where the user can request books or study materials they want. Which leads to

Retaining users

This feature acts as a reason for the user to stick around and wait for some time.

Providing notifications to notify the books or study material is back in stock. This increases the no. of times the user visits the product.

Understanding the demand

Based on the request we can see clear data on what are the books in demand. Which helps us increase the supply of the book.

Onboarding And Personalization To User

Click on the screen to play the video

👉 Prototype link: https://www.figma.com/proto/UcYZ5N943VXdbD7bW6L4FL/portfolio?node-id=3%3A34040&scaling=scale-down&page-id=3%3A13077&starting-point-node-id=3%3A34033&show-proto-sidebar=1

(❕Press the keyboard shortcut letter R so that you don’t miss out on any screens)

Onboarding is a very important step to show what separates it from the rest of the products and how it adds value to the user’s life.

Personalizing the user’s experience and recommendations based on a few questions that are asked at the time of onboarding. So that users will not feel overwhelmed by the abundance of content.

Customizing The Study Kit

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👉 prototype link: https://www.figma.com/proto/UcYZ5N943VXdbD7bW6L4FL/portfolio?node-id=3%3A36159&scaling=scale-down&page-id=3%3A13077&starting-point-node-id=3%3A36504&show-proto-sidebar=1

(❕Press the keyboard shortcut letter R so that you don’t miss out on any screens)

The ability to buy all the books and study materials requirements let it be for a whole year or a subject is a huge time saver for the user.

When providing the users with customization flexibility on top of the already put together standard study kits gives them more control. Which is a user-centric way to provide the solution.

Purchasing From The Cart

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👉 Prototype link: https://www.figma.com/proto/UcYZ5N943VXdbD7bW6L4FL/portfolio?node-id=3%3A36846&scaling=scale-down&page-id=3%3A13077&starting-point-node-id=3%3A36846&show-proto-sidebar=1

(❕Press the keyboard shortcut letter R so that you don’t miss out on any screens)

Using the current location to automatically fill the address details so that the user does not have to manually fill in the fields, is a helpful and quick feature to add.

Providing feedback about the status of the order once placed is a good sign to let the user know what happened. Instead of leaving them confused and wondering if their order got placed.

Submitting Request

Click on the screen to play the video

👉 Prototype link: https://www.figma.com/proto/UcYZ5N943VXdbD7bW6L4FL/portfolio?node-id=3%3A37205&scaling=scale-down&page-id=3%3A13077&starting-point-node-id=3%3A37205&show-proto-sidebar=1

(❕Press the keyboard shortcut letter R so that you don’t miss out on any screens)

Submitting a request eases the user’s pain of not being able to find a particular book/study material. So that they can be notified once the particular book/study material is back in stock. They act as a reason for the user to come to visit the product again.

It also helps us to understand what the books/study materials are on demand. So that we can act upon it to increase the supply of them.

Testing My value proposition

In order to check for the problem to solution fitment, I created a live website and tried to explain what was I trying to offer with my product.

Posted about it on a few of my socials based on which I got a few people to subscribe to receive updates.

Self-reflection

Should have added a form to the landing page instead of a subscription. So that I could have collected more information about the possible users.

Conducting Usability Study

Study method: Contextual enquiry

No. of participants:1

The person falls into the category of the 2nd user type where the person is just looking to buy a reference book and all other key books and materials are provided by the college

What Were My Observations And Learnings

The user was not so familiar with the concept of purchasing the books in already put together kit format.

The person struggled to understand and navigate through the app.

The user was unfamiliar with a few terms and need to improve the UX writing of the product

The user struggled to do some of the tasks.

The user liked the value that the overall product is trying to offer.

In order to simulate the real-life experience, we should ask the user to navigate through the prototype in a practical device.

Changes Done After The Study

Providing coach marks for the new users to understand the features of the app and where it can be accessed from.

Adding in the new option to purchase kits for specific subjects with the existing yearly kit feature.

Change in UX writing (the user was not able to understand a few terms)

Establishing The Brand Guidelines

Colour Pallet In Use

Bookmaster helps medical students buy used books ad study materials. Used blue as a primary colour as it is closely related to the medical field and we want to evoke the feeling of trust for several instances into the users.

Orange is used as an accent colour as it evokes a sense of confidence and optimism in the users.

Typeface In Use

In order to match the traits of the product, I needed to choose a typeface that was very clean and minimal.

So I Roboto as it was a very clean typeface that is high on readability. It is a typeface that is focused more on the side of utility rather than emotion.

Logo Of The Product

The logo portrays a visual representation of a medical book which relates very closely to what the product is about.

Scoping and planning of the product

What Were My Learnings And Challenges Faced?

My Learnings

Should always focus on the key workflows first.

The solution should be scalable and more feasible so that it does not affect the business outcomes.

The more precise our target audience group is the better impact we can have on their life.

Instead of asking for a subscription, I should have attach a form to the landing page to collect more info about the user to understand the audience better.

How we use the typeface matters the most rather than what typeface we use.

Challenges Faced

Scoping and figuring out my target audience.