Reading From Your Pocket — NLB Overdrive
– A Mobile Website Case Study
NLB Overdrive is an online platform that facilitates the access and loan transactions between the National Library and avid readers. Readers are exposed to all genres of literature through multiple facets such as eBooks, audiobooks, magazines. Over the course of six weeks, my team of four has identified challenges and followed up with solutions for the user’s experience on the mobile site.
Access to literature and reading materials are now abundant, but how do we make the shift from hardback to virtual a more committed one? Keeping in mind that in this digital era, our older, less tech savvy peers might get left behind:
How Might We make the NLB Overdrive website experience a more memorable & pleasant one to users?
Users & Audiences
Basing our target audience on the users we studied, most were working adults ranging from mid 20s to 40s, with a relatively decent propensity & proficiency in interacting with digital platforms. We took note of identifiers such as the pain points, obstacles & challenges, as well as the motivations, needs, and desires of such user demographics. The consequential behaviours of our participants led us to draft up a Role-based persona that we would eventually have our UX research and solutions focused on.
Roles & Responsibilities
Our team of four design-led individuals carried out user testing & empathising, defining the problems and needs via UX research focus groups, ideating possibilities through the work of brainstorming as a team through the Four Category Method, and projecting those 4 main solutions onto prototypes that would be tested for its effectiveness & success.
Scope & Constraints
Unique Limitations of a Remote Usability Study
· Restrictions on extent of research & Guerrilla Testing due to dis-ability to travel & observe users in a public & more natural setting
· Observations done through either phone call or video conferences which inhibited to a small extent the effectiveness of truly empathising with our participants and studying their behaviours in face-to-face
· Observations done on camera, behaviour through screen-sharing, which may cause the participant to feel slightly uncomfortable and not behave 100% naturally
Our Process & Methods
Through this six-week project, our team accomplished the following through a 5 phase timeline:
Timeline
Week 1: Empathy Map
Week 2–3: Affinity Diagram >> Persona >> CJM
Week 4: Team Brainstorm
Week 5: Paper Prototype + Mid-fi Prototype
Week 6: User Testing + Insights
Empathise: Immerse, Observe, Engage
“To better understand the reading behaviours, preferences, opinions, feelings and responses to the NLB Overdrive site, we conducted twelve usability tests.
We set a simple task for participants to do, tasking the participants to borrow a specific book title, and read it online. A multi-user empathy map was created as a result of our observations.”
Why we make the task simple?
- To ensure tasks are completed.
- These are the common actions that people go to the OverDrive website to do — Search, borrow and read.
- Setting simple task allows participants to start the test in a more relaxed way, they will think — “I can make it”.
- We can also test to see if participants encounter any difficulties in the process?
Affinity Diagram: Finding Patterns Among Qualitative Data
“We analysed the empathy map to find patterns and clusters of information that fall under the same pain-points.”
Insights on Pain Points
To look for solutions, we first identified the recurring problems raised during usability testing. Following the Design Thinking Process, our accumulated insights and analysis led us to the following conclusions on the main pain points:
· Login | Onboarding Process (Behaviour of Customer towards Structure of Content Flow)
· Un-intuitive Online Reading Experience (Usability of Interface)
· Lack of Drive to Borrow Books + Incentives (Tangible Rewards)
· Lack of Community + Emotional Benefits
UX Persona:
“Based on the pain points, challenges, needs, desires & motivations of our participants, we began to paint a picture of our UX persona, with the intentions of focusing our efforts on the lesser than tech savvy older end of the spectrum.”
Customer Journey Map:
“ The Customer Journey Map details the highs and lows of our user’s journey based on our UX persona, highlighting key-points through specific actions taken and also their attitudes which are displayed by their behaviours and spoken words.”
HMW’s Brainstorming
“Our team began to pick apart our persona’s needs and goals, frustrations and pain-points, to articulate the main focus and direction of our efforts. This was done through a ‘How Might We’ prompt; With our problem statement coming into play”
Diverging Ideas: Problem-solving through Relevance & Novelty
“Throwing out ideas at random with the HMW in mind, the team started to brainstorm on solutions that ranged from Novel (Most uniquely solved) to relevant (Most effectively solved).”
Impossible to Possible Method
“Picking out some ideas we thought were interesting but needed refining, we used the ‘Impossible to Possible’ method to increase the feasibility of the ideas.”
Converging Ideas: Four Category Method
“ Narrowing it down to the 4 we deemed best, ideas that were ‘Most Rational’ & ‘Delightful’, to those that fell under ‘Daring’ & ‘Long-shot’. Only then were we able to categorise these solutions.”
Prototyping
Touchpoint Map
The below touchpoint map illustrates our thought process and how we incorporated our solutions into the existing structure of NLB Overdrive, through the highlighted checkpoints:
Paper Prototypes
The below images show our first step process on getting out the rough structure and content flow for the paper prototypes as a team, putting ourselves in the user’s shoes to think ahead of click-by-click behaviour, exploring into nitty gritty details including terms & conditions to take into account issues of personal info etc.
Mid-Fidelity Prototypes
Why Mid-Fidelity Prototype?
Due to constraints on travel and face-to-face interaction with participants, not being able to share paper prototypes amongst each other for user testing, as well affecting the efficiency and accuracy of the results due to difficulty in testing paper prototypes over screen sharing.
Problem to Solution: Refining the Execution Stage
Challenge #1
- Un-intuitive Online Reading Experience on Mobile Browser
Solution: Transforming Loans Page to an Online Intuitive Bookshelf
- Improving the interface and presentation of book loans such that they are easily accessible online to those who would rather not download the Overdrive App and read from their browser (Offline + Online Access)
- Intuitive guide to improve reading experience through the mobile browser
- Creating an intuitive browsing mode where it recommends books on the NLB Overdrive homepage after updating their preferences
Insights
Intuitive Bookshelf
- Create preferences based on book genres instead of titles for better reception
- User-responsive tutorial for Online Browser was well received; Participants mentioned that its helpful to new users, and does not bother regular ones by popping out of nowhere whenever they start reading
Feedback
Challenge #2
- Lack of Community & Emotional Benefits
Solution: NLB Book Club Community
- NLB Live: A livestream hosting & viewing platform for credible NLB Overdrive members where users are free to peruse and listen in on official online events as well as hosted book podcasts
- Book Forum Channels: A sharing space relating to book content and discussions where users are welcome to contribute ideas, comment on threads, find other users like them
Insights
NLB Book Club (Forum)
- Users mentioned that it could be further explored by reaching out to schools as a reading programme for students.
- Forum was compared to Quora, where participant mentioned top threads could be sorted based on number of up-votes, use collapse function to view threads instead etc.
NLB Live
- Guidance is needed due to this being an unfamiliar concept in library interface, suggestions for context on the platform, introduction banners.
- Confusion over whether it was for online courses and events or just book discussions and podcasts.
Challenge #3
- Low Drive to Borrow Books + Lack of Incentives (Tangible Rewards)
Solution: NLB Reward System
- Users will be able to claim rewards based on user activity for checkpoints such as daily logins, participation in reading challenges, loan quotas, friend referrals, and contribution to community.
Insights
Rewards System
- Well received, creates incentive for users to be more active on NLB Overdrive.
- Expiry date of vouchers and other information could be included to create urgency to use or claim them.
- Suggestion to display top users and their point level accumulation, similar to games, to show credibility and keep people on their toes.
Thanks for Reading!
Feel free to check out our process boards on Miro:
Credits to Our Team members: