PROJECT CONTEXT
BOG BOG is one of the projects done during my studies at Google. The students were challenged to deliver an app for a social good.
BOG BOG is a non-profit library that carries a collection of open domain ebooks and audiobooks for free, no subscriptions and shady ‘free’ access.
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the ideia of easy access to education and opportunities to people in less developed countries is exciting
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audiobook and ebooks are great tools for those who are vision and hearing impaired
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to discover the impact BOG BOG could have on our dopamine driven culture.
PROJECT GOALS
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Create an accessible platform for users to read or listen to books at a free cost
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Deliver a dependable and relevant platform for all users
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Easy and low-cost maintanable plataform
RESEARCH DETAILS
TARGET AUDIENCE
During the Intercept Study I understood who uses my local Library and why. This was a fundamental research as I noted that some elders were not interested in ebooks and audiobooks.
I was begining to map to who to direct my target audience and start empatizing with these users.
To find the target audience I decided to conduct a Intercept Study at the local library where I made a few informal questions to the users during 2 sessions; one during the week and one during the weekend
PROJECT KEY´S CHALLENGES
USER INTERVIEWS
With base on the audience target results of the intercept study made, I conducted interviews to 5 users in the local Library with the goal to understand the User’s frustrations, needs and behaviour
EMPATHY MAP
PERSONAS
The interviews defined better who the end user and their needs would be. With this information I was able to define different types of users and their pain points. Their behaviour and experience in physical libraries was very different from each other.
PROBLEM STATEMENTS
Problem statements where created based on the pain points of the users and further organized in themes.
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THEME ACCESSIBILITY
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THEME VIRTUAL BOOKS EXPERIENCE
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THEME PHYSICAL LIBRARY
HOW MIGHT WE
After the problem statements are layed down I was happy to find confirmation that the end product will serve the user. An App seems to have a strong potential to solve the problems statements under the theme ‘Physical Library’.
For the themes ‘Accessibility’ and ‘Virtual Books Experience’ I needed to question and find creative solutions with how might we under 10 minutes. The time scarcity can help with finding the most fundamental concepts.
VALUE PREPOSITION
This was the moment I had a concrete handful of research based early design concepts and needed to evaluate the time left for the completion of the project and understand what concepts where the most fundamental for the project. Leaving some for future iterations as this concepts had a less priority nature within.
The chosen foundation values were the following:
BUSINESS NEEDS
Being BOG BOG a non-profit initiative, the most valueble resource would be volunteers and a simple and self-sustainable maintenance system to keep the project alive.
Applying for some govenament support for financial aim and entering in collaboration with theatre schools to record expressive readings of the books would also be important factor to support BOG BOG.
EARLY DESIGN CONCEPTS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
After understanding the needs, frustrations and behaviours of the users, I decided to start organising and synthesising the information that will orientate the design process for a simple and effortless navegation
Before committing with digital wireframes, there was some paper wireframing experiments based on possible soluctions defined previously during the research phase. Paper drawing of wireframes opens space for new ideias to come in a short time-frame.
WIREFRAMING
To make a Low Fidelity Prototype I started to pass the paper wireframes into digital form. In this stage of the design bog bog starts to get a more define form for the first usability study.
USABILITY STUDY INSIGHTS
I conduted a moderated Usability Study with 5 participants, where I obverved how each participant completed tasks on the Low-Fidelity Prototype. This study gave me the opportunity to understand where the prototype had to be iterated before I committed to the high fidelity prototype.
VISUAL DESIGN
Before starting a visual board I defined the mood and language for bog bog. I thought of joyful colors like Salmon, Orange and Pink and quiet colours to complement this vibe as blues and Petrol blue scales.
A familiar language to go with it that all users from 2 to 99 years would understand.
WRAPPING UP
CONCLUSION
Virtual Libraries are still facing challenges and are not yet where they could be. In a physical library, the user has free access to all books, public domain and trending best sellers. However nowadays the virtual market for literature is paid and limits users to hours of audiobooks or chapters of books.
BOG BOG cannot solve this entirely as it only offers the public domain sources for the user. Nonetheless could be a beginning step towards a place where virtual libraries can question or complement physical libraries bringing knowledge to all people independently of their accessibility to education and quality leisure.
LEARNINGS
#1 the design process is in constant iteration
Research is the North Star of any project, and it is important to be at service for the user and surrender to the fact that the project will go through changes and iterations that weren't though initially.
#2 finding interviewers
Being a student meant I had to find interviewers by myself, I had no subscription with side recruiters which made extra difficult to find people who would actually appear. This gave me the learning that for my next study cases I will offer a small compensation to motivate the interviewers to show up, and build a more balanced interaction where I can give something back to the people who actually could give me their time.
#3 usability studies can have more than one goal
During my usability studies I focused a lot on tasks for the users, their journey to accomplish the tasks and how they felt. However I think usabilities studies can also cary side testing, without a user flow: as an example I wished I had added at the end some clicking tests on different controls, to have a better feeling of which design to use on the controls.
#4 accessibility serves all
While designing for elderly readers, I came to conclusion that keeping the overall design accessible with clean and easy readable font was also extremely beneficial for users who need to pick books fast. This is fascinating to learn; when focused on specific user group, often other user groups journeys became improved as well.