The Book Club
integrating social Book Discovery and Collaborative Reading into a cohesive and interactive space where users can create or join book clubs, participate in shared reading experiences, and discuss books in addition to all the outstanding features on the Apple Books platform.
Tools: Figma, Procreate.
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Note: This is a conceptual project and unaffiliated with Apple in any way.
My biggest design failure
As a beginner to Figma and design processes in general, my first ever project was simply meant to be an exercise in prototyping and basic UI/UX visualisation, to help me understand the software better. However, I wanted it to be more than just a design; I wanted to create a platform I actually found useful, that I felt could be helpful to potentially others as well.
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To that end, mytbr was born- a conceptual book tracking app developed to address the personal and practical need for a streamlined, intuitive way to manage to-be-read (TBR) lists. Combining functionality with an engaging design to create a tool that makes tracking, discovering, and managing books easier and more enjoyable.
What I did not realise was just how unnecessary the app was. Everything that mytbr did, Apple Books and Kindle did better- and I'd even imagined an integration with the platforms, not realising that I had absolutely nothing more to add to them. Conducting even the slightest amount of research could have saved me the valuable time I spent conceptualizing the app, but I was determined to do better.
Although discouraged by my astounding initial failure, I began to rethink my idea from a whole new perspective. If I was imagining that my design was an integration to Apple Books, what feature would I want to see the most?
Where did I see them lacking?
The New Feature
User Flows for feature
The Book Club is a social reading feature designed for Apple Books to foster a sense of community among readers.
This feature allows users to create or join book clubs, track reading progress, participate in discussions and share interesting highlights and quotes they find to foster group reflection on the chosen book.
The goal of this feature is to enhance a user's reading experience by blending social interaction with book discussions, making Apple Books beloved to enthusiastic readers.
Users:
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Casual Readers: Individuals who read occasionally and enjoy discussing books in an informal setting.
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Avid Readers: Book enthusiasts looking for structured discussions and recommendations
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Book Clubs: Existing clubs seeking a digital platform for coordination and engagement.
Key features of Book Clubs
1. Club creation and Personalisation where
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Users can create a new book club, naming it, adding a description and toggling member settings: admin controls, active member settings, and spectator viewings.
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Customisable club badges and profile pictures linked to Apple ID.
2. Club Dashboard, which includes
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Current Reading Selection, which includes the book cover, creator's progress bar and chapter milestones.
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Activity Feed, which has a live timeline of comments, quotes and highlights shared by members.
3. Interactive discussion, including
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A built in forum where members discuss books in threads categorised by chapters and themes
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Highlighting text in the book directly shares it to the dashboard depending on popularity
4. Book Club Analytics
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Stats like total books read, average member progress and most-discussed chapters
Studying Apple Books UI
Old Home
As an avid user of Apple Books, I am already familiar with their UI and tried to mimic in my design. This was done in three ways:
Typography: Apple Books uses a combination of Athelas and Helvetica families in the app. After studying and replicating their Home and Library screens as best I could while taking some creative liberties, I used these fonts and their respective sizes as a guide for the rest of the feature.
Hierarchy: There is a very distinctive hierarchy in Apple Books UI, in the difference between their Featured and Continue reading book sizes on the Home Screen, to the standard blocks in the Library and Book Store. I copied and pasted elements from their screen onto Figma, using this as a guideline to the blocks in my feature as well, trying to replicate their hierarchy as best I could.
Color Scheme: I designed the feature to be used in Dark Mode, as that is the default for Apple Books as well. Although their color scheme is extremely subtle, I used the Apple Developer Color documentation as a reference for how the app should look, although I ended up modifying the main colors based on the 'customisable' scheme chosen by the fictitious creator of "The Creators."
New Home Screen
Old Library
New Library
Spectator Screens
Spectator screen
Member screen
I tested the app on five of the target group users- casual readers and avid readers, and three out of them pointed out a flaw in my design- the club dashboard was only visible to members, and spectators didn't have access to even a glimpse of what conversations were like, which might discourage them from joining.
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Taking this into account, I added a separate 'Spectators only' page without access to joining the discussion, with a modification where the personal progress bar should be having a follow button instead. I also added an additional setting where the creator and admin of the club can toggle whether spectators can view the dashboard without joining.
Final Deliverables
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Landing Page
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Featured and recommended book clubs ​​
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Your book clubs displayed (joined and created)
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Club Dashboard
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Central hub for book club activities
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Widgets for progress, discussions and creator highlights
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- Discussion Interface​
- Organised, easy-to-navigate threads​
- Sharing highlights and quotes
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​Add your own club
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Create and customise your own club​
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Toggle settings for admin, member and spectator settings
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Share to invite friends (Apple ID requisite)
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What I Learned
I had two key takeaways from this project:
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The essentiality of conducting user research prior to starting a project. I could have saved valuable time and resources had I researched and understood my competitors and their features for mytbr properly without blindly jumping into creating and designing a whole new app. The second part of this learning was my understanding that it's not always essential to create a whole new product for every single addition. Every product on the market can be improved, and adding those additions to an existing product can be just as, if not more, valuable as conceptualizing something that may not even need to exist by itself.
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Different users for the same feature or app may have different options available for each of them. Extending beyond simply membership, this can apply to pay screens, administrative controls and other key elements that require editing and anticipation when I am conceptualizing the design itself. In my next projects, I will make sure to consider the different types of users depending on the app features, and make sure that my project accommodates for all of them.​