The Challenge and the Goal
The National Library Board (NLB) is the main library in which all Singaporeans frequent to borrow books. In this project, we will look at the NLB’s Overdrive website and see how we might increase ebook readership that leverages on NLB’s OverDrive website.
The NLB Overdrive, available in both web and app, is designed for users of the library to borrow eBooks and eAudiobooks online. There is also an in-built reader for the users to download the eBooks and eAudiobooks.
Over the course of 6 weeks, we learned and adopted various steps of Design Thinking. Starting from empathizing and identifying users’ paint points, we then defined the right problem to address. We conducted ideation sessions to generate potential ideas, put it into a prototype and pushed it out for user testing to solicit feedback.
Who are we?
We are 3 students starting to pick up UX Design and learning the ropes of Design Thinking. This is our first UX Project where we familiarise ourselves with the various techniques in UX and Design Thinking to understand our users better and to help solve their pain points. This project was done over a 7 week period and this is our first step into the UX world and we are still learning everyday!
Understanding and empathising with our users
To kickstart our research, we wanted to first know what users, including ourselves, thought about the current NLB Overdrive site. We came up with a simple task for the users to borrow an ebook of their choice through the NLB Overdrive webpage.
After immersing and completing the tasks ourselves, we invited three other users to complete the same task. During this process, we observed and engaged with the users, noting down what they Say, Think, Do and Feel and populated the findings in an empathy map.
Here are some of our discoveries:
- People want recommendations
The users would constantly ask “what is recommended” when they were at the landing page. They were mostly unhappy with the collections that were presented to them and would seek out other ways to find a desired book, e.g. Google. - Signing up is difficult
The onboarding process wasn’t intuitive. Most of the users felt frustration from the amount of information that they had to input when creating an account. - Filter Categories
Some users had a hard time understanding the filter categories. The filter showed too many unrelated eBooks search results. - Borrowing process is straightforward
Although most of the users had a problem with looking for a desired book to borrow, they had no problems borrowing the book of their choice.
There were times when the users were not clear of our instructions and raised some questions during the process. It is important for us to ensure that the user fully understands the task before starting it. Perhaps, we could simplify the task if it is too difficult. Most of our tests were conducted remotely during this Circuit Breaker period and it is important to be clear to prevent confusion.
Another issue we faced was slow internet connection. One of our users kept mentioning that their internet was very slow and it affected their experience with the website. It is also important to check the internet connection on both sides before conducting a remote screen observation.
Defining the problem and user persona
Based on our findings, we converged and tried to find the right problem to address. We used an Affinity Map to cluster similar and related findings together. With just an initial look, the topic on recommendations surfaced as one of the major pain points that the users had.
To address the problem, we needed a Persona to work with. We created Amber. Amber is an Early Childhood Educator that enjoys reading in her free time. Aside from borrowing books for leisure, she also borrows children’s books for her classes in English and Art.
Amber is also someone who relies largely on recommendations to assess if certain books could fulfil her needs before making a decision. In addition, she would often borrow a large number of books at a time due to her job.
To visualise her experience with NLB Overdrive, we drew up a Customer Journey Map (CJM) of Amber’s attempt to borrow multiple books for both her lessons and personal reading. From the CJM, we noticed several pain points:
- Search results are not smart
Amber’s search results contained plenty of books that she had borrowed previously and it was difficult for her to find something new. She would either have to scroll really far down or search for the specific book that she wants to borrow. - It is very time consuming to have to look through multiple samples
Amber had to spend time loading and looking through the samples to be sure that the ebook is suitable. - Hitting the loan quota
Amber was forced to deselect one of her options as she could only borrow a limited number of books.
With these pain points in mind, we brainstormed and came up with a bunch of different “How might we” questions that could help solve Amber’s problems. After discussing and going through the various “How might we” questions, we decided on a problem statement:
“How might we improve the browsing and searching experience to entice readers?”
We decided on this ‘How Might We’ question as we felt that it addressed the main pain point that our users had. Also, it allowed for a variety of solutions and was not too narrow.
Brainstorming and ideation
This is where the fun begins. With the problem statement, we dove into brainstorming. One of the methods used was the worst idea possible. We tried generating some ridiculous ideas such as Mind Reading and a Book-Tinder, and subsequently tapered it down to something reasonable and feasible. We also sought inspiration from other similar services such as Netflix and Spotify. Eventually, we decided on 3 key features:
- A personalised recommendation list
A feature to allow users to incorporate their reading preferences to curate a personalised list of recommendations. thus reducing the time required for users to find a book of their interest. - Chatbot with a quiz
Essentially a virtual librarian, we decided on a chatbot for users to approach, ask questions, and be served. Users could also ask the chatbot for recommendations via a quiz, and if they like it, they’ll be able to add it to a cart. - A book cart with a premium option.
We wanted an experience akin to online shopping, where users make multiple selections, review, and check out. This would help users like Amber prioritise their choices given the limited quota. We also introduced a premium option for users to increase their loan quota, so they need not make compromises. Profits could be used to purchase more copies or titles to increase readership.
The brainstorming session was very fun and effective. We learnt that we should not be afraid of coming up with ridiculous ideas, as it might lead us to brilliant ideas. We didn’t believe that ridiculous ideas would birth other ingenious ideas, but we were wrong. It is important to think out of the box and be creative. Crazy and dumb ideas are what makes it novel.
After coming up with some ridiculous ideas, we went through the “Impossible to Possible” process and improved the idea. After improving on a few impossible ideas, we then utilised the Four Categories Method to sort out the ideas. The four groups are Most Rational, Most Delightful, Daring and Long Shot. It is important to note that we can also include the impossible, improbable and probable ideas in the Four Categories.
The Paper Prototype
Once we decided the features we wished to build, we started drawing. For the paper prototype, it allowed us to test our ideas quickly and improve them swiftly. Sketching is a low-cost, quick, and simple way to illustrate our ideas within the team. We came out with 3 different iterations of each feature in no time. It was a fun process and we had fun trying to animate the interactions with the paper prototype.
However, we quickly realised that a prototype is beyond just sketching each feature. We needed to think through how these 3 features interfaced with each other, linking it up smoothly. By building upon each others’ ideas and putting the best of each feature together, we got ourselves a lo-fi paper prototype for testing.
In order to conduct user testing remotely and effectively, we needed a digital, interactive prototype. We uploaded our drawings into Marvel and turned these sketches into a mid-fi prototype, ready for our first test.
Testing the prototype!
A scenario, along with 3 tasks, was pre-determined to provide context to our test participants. This helped them to understand the situation and place themselves in the scenario when performing the test.
Scenario: It’s your first time using the NLB app to borrow a book. After creating your account, you are prompted to complete the book preference quiz. You may also look on the chatbot for more recommendations before choosing a few books to borrow.
Tasks:
- You are a new user. Complete the book preference quiz to get some recommendations from the app.
- Use the chatbot to get more specific recommendations.
- Try to check out and borrow the books when you have exceeded the loan quota
As these user tests were done remotely, some of the participants agreed to perform the tasks via a video conference. This enabled us to observe their expressions as they go through the activity, allowing us to take note of their behaviours.
After the tasks were completed, we had conversations with the participants to find out what they think of our design. These are some of their responses:
- Glad to see a personalised recommendation.
- Quite intuitive, process is easy to follow.
- Add tabs based on genres instead of book titles.
- Option to edit my reading preference in the future.
- A “Need more help?” text beside chatbot to draw attention.
- I want to know my loan quota as I browse.
How we expect the product to be used may differ from how it is actually used. Through the data collected, we learnt what the users liked and disliked about the product rather than relying on our assumptions. The feedback from our first round of testing would influence the design downstream as we review, reiterate, and revamp it into prototype 2.0.
Overall, through design thinking, we came to understand how our users thought and felt about the NLB Overdrive app. After recognising the pain points that they face, we were better equipped to solve their problems and cater to their needs.
Reflection
The Design Thinking Process
In conclusion, I honestly had fun during this process of learning and growing together with my group mates. It was interesting to see how our project slowly grew from the different UX techniques that we used and how we ended up with our paper prototype. My favourite step would have to be the brainstorming and ideation stage. It was fun to come up with all the crazy ideas and seeing how far we could push the concept of ebooks and borrowing them. Moving forward, I can’t wait to see what is in store for us and learn more about UX. — Cheryl
The Design Thinking process taught me to think end-to-end, new ways to gather user insights and generate new ideas to develop or revamp a product/service. It helps to have great teammates who are creative, encouraging, and often piggybacking onto each others’ ideas to come out with new and interesting stuffs. — Shaun
Prior to the class, I have always thought that ‘Design Thinking’ was similar to ‘Creative Thinking’, which was to solve a problem creatively. However, through the lessons, I’ve learnt that design thinking is not just about being creative, it’s about empathizing and solving problems with a human-centered approach. I’m grateful for the lessons I have learned from participating in this project as well as from my fellow group mates. — Kim
Done by: Cheryl, Shaun & Kim
