Literary Love
Literary Love, a digital application intended to help older adults reflect on books they have read using social connection and discourse. The user research conducted by the project team suggested that older adults often have physical and social limitations, making books a medium through which to socially reflect and connect with others. This case study details the steps taken to prototype and iterate on the Literary Love application.
Ideation & Sketches
Goals
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Encourages older adults to read books, reread books, and discuss their feelings about them in a group or community.
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Build new relationships on the platform and make deeper connections through the reflection process.
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Create a space for older adults to reflect on their interpretation and takeaways from the key concepts represented in the books they chose to read.
The primary goal of designing the low-fidelity prototypes was to delineate the key functionalities of the application, with a specific emphasis on those that allow users to read and discuss with their peers in a socially distant manner. The low-fidelity prototype was developed by hand-sketching screens in order to map out the basic layout of the application, how its key functionalities would be accessed, and what those functionalities would look like on the screen.
Sketches
The designs differed slightly, but all shared the common goal of allowing users to discuss with others about certain books and help them reflect on their social connections. These designs were later synthesized into the screens shown later in this report.
The home page was intended to be a library of the books users wished to read and discuss. Books could be added to the library by searching with the “Add” button on the home page. Once the user clicked on one of the books, it would lead to a page where the user could decide to read the book, start a discussion, revisit old discussions or reflect on the book. If the user chose to discuss, the application would provide discussion prompt suggestions.
Low-Fi Prototypes
Design Pro
The majority of the icons came from Iconify since it’s known for adhering to standards and having lots of options. The design was focused on using large icons since our demographic is more likely to have vision issues, and making it as minimalistic as possible so that it’d be easier to use. Unnecessary features for the app such as the navigation bar were removed.
I helped our team revise the user flow. I suggested going with a blue color scheme since it’s known to make users feel calmer. Our team was discussing the idea of having a dark mode, but Apple already has these accessibility settings.
Usability Testing
Testing Plans
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Instruct the user to work through book addition, new conversation, and reflection key pathways
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Assess the user’s ability to effectively navigate through each pathway
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Ascertain what difficulties the user had with key pathways
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Ascertain what features the user thinks might be helpful or should be added
Testing Results
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Adds titles to books on the home page
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Thought the number of group members when making a group was either a book rating
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System or a total number of groups
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Thought the phone vs zoom vs text was for “making comments”
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Recommended allowing users to add their own prompts / not only reroll
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Was unsure of what the functionalities were at first
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Wanted text for the four buttons when entering a book
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Wanted text that explains content more or a page that explains iconography
High-Fi Prototypes
Major Changes
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Added text descriptions to the iconography and buttons to make them more appealing and understandable to users.
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Added an additional button on the prompt section on the discussion page. Users are now allowed to create and delete their own type-in prompt, which provides users more flexibility in the discussion section.
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Replaced our book placeholder icon on the library page with the actual covers of the books, so that the book selection is more appealing to users.
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Added reflection sessions rather than being prompted to reflect at certain times in the discussion process, and we updated the reflection icons. Users are then allowed to create group conversations and reflect at any time they want.
Major Changes
Reflections
Limitations
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Fully refine the high-fidelity prototype due to the limitation of our usability testing sample size.
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Due to time constraints, the team was only able to have one participant for usability testing. If I had sufficient time, I would invite more participants from a variety of backgrounds to participate in our usability testing.
Reflections
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The project was truly an act of teamwork.
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Prototyping was probably the longest part of the process since we often had different visions for task processes and visuals.
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The hardest part of creating the prototype was getting the visual refinement down and making sure that each task was simple to navigate.
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I spent a lot of time thinking about which layouts would look the best or which button sizes were most complimentary.
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Overall, the prototype only focuses on the main pathways, but for a more complete feel, I think I would add more features like account settings, etc.