Introduction

Currently, eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Nobles’ Nook are very popular devices on which users are able to read digital versions of books and periodicals. In one form or another, these devices allow users to “highlight” and save passages in their digital books. However, this is generally as far as the service goes. The highlights then exist only on these devices.

Bibliofile is a concept for a website that allows its users to synchronize and store all highlights and notes they make while reading eBooks. Users can then visit the Bibliofile website wherein they can interact with their highlights and notes: browse, delete, categorize, share, review, and even explore connections between their highlights.

Personas

Most of the uses and therefore personas and goals of the Bibliofile product are academic. Certainly, the product could be used and enjoyed as a supplement to recreational reading. However, I feel that, in order to really push the prototype and explore what it could really offer, the project needs to have more academically-oriented personas and goals.

Age: 25
Occupation: Graduate Student
Income Level: $10,000
Education Level: Bachelors

Personal Background Information:

Anna has a bachelors in political science and is now working on her masters studying law. She is constantly reading books and peer-reviewed journals. She is often taking notes of her reading for a specific research paper deadline. But, she also takes note of poignant passages with the thought that it will be useful at some point or another in her education or career.

Reason for Using the Product:

School dominates Anna’s life. If she is not in the classroom, she is writing papers and reading. Her main use of the product is central for these tasks. She uses the product to organize her notes, review for tests, and write research papers.

Age: 38
Occupation: Lecturer/Blogger/Consultant on all things Marketing
Income Level: $95,000
Education Level: Bachelors

Personal Background Information:

Lisa eats, breathes, and sleeps marketing. Her lifestyle is nomadic. She is almost always travelling for a meeting or to speak at a conference. She is just as active online, tweeting, positing, commenting on the topic of marketing.

Reason for Using the Product:

Lisa is constantly pushing marketing information to people. Whether it is in the form of a blog post, a conference lecture, or a presentation to a client. She must always keep abreast of the latest trends in marketing and, in turn, keep her output equally fresh. Lisa uses the product to do these tasks.

Age: 55
Occupation: Professor of Architecture
Income Level: $75,000
Education Level: Masters

Personal Background Information:

Stephen loves to talk architecture and design. He enjoyed his time working in the field of architecture but was frequently frustrated by a lack of discussion around the theoretical and conceptual. This drew him back into academia as a professor. He has grown to constantly seeing things in terms of the topics he is covering in his classes. As Stephen gets older, he is becoming fonder of the idea of writing a book.

Reason for Using the Product:

Stephen’s main use for the product revolves around his job. He has found it helpful in developing course curriculum, specifically readings and long-answer tests. But, he also enjoys using it for his own personal reading and projects—specifically the book he has always wanted to write.

Before the product was introduced to Stephen, he was very reluctant to invest in an eReading device and certainly did not like to read electronic documents on a screen. He enjoys books as much as he does reading. He even finds meaning in how books are stored.

Paper Prototype

After having spent a decent amount of time sketching, I arrived at a few general models which were just complete enough to throw at a few testers. So, the natural choice was a series of paper prototypes constructed around the goals of my personas.

My findings were simultaneously encouraging and humbling. The email model for general navigation and curation seemed to work very well. I had a tester who was not a Gmail user, but had no trouble utilizing my very Gmail-eque model. However, the visual network model for comparing and exploring highlights did not test tremendously well.

I should rephrase that slightly. The actual visual network model was not too bad. After users played with it a little, they understood and liked it. However, getting them to this area was probably the task most fraught with confusion. The main culprit would be the unfamiliar pattern of selected data (in this case, a checkboxed highlight) remaining selected and present despite committing other parallel tasks (in this case, searching for another highlight).

There were, of course, plenty of other smaller findings that are invaluable, but the above seem to be the general themes.

Below are three PDFs documenting the three goals as completed with the paper prototype.

Digital Prototype

The first iteration of the digital prototype was almost identical in layout and behavior to the paper prototype. Subsequent iterations mainly wrestled a lot with the aforementioned issue of how chosen data follows a user through multiple queries for other information while remaining quickly accessible. Similarly, the mode(s) of connecting data and browsing data via alternative visualizations were also given much attention between iterations.

Below are links to each iteration of the digital prototype with the exception of the earliest.

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