"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -Marcel Proust

Have you ever been looking for a new audiobook listening experience, but felt as if you couldn't find anything new and exciting?

This case study provides you with a refined way of searching for something that excites you by providing exact specifications for what you want to read such as genre, author, and book length.

Always visible filters provide you with the knowledge of what criteria you are searching by at all times.

You can even utilize the tools produced by this case study to find books that are similar to ones you have already read and enjoyed.

It is simple to sort your library using the always visible filters to find the exact book you want something similar too. Or for multiple results, select two or more books.

And when you are feeling as if you don't know what you want to listen to, you can see what others are listening to on your Audible social feed. Or for others who want something new to listen to, if you have something, post about it to your follower's feeds.

It's simple on Audible's social platform to connect with your friends and author's profiles so you can find new books to listen to.

Learn More About The Project

Context

This project aims to deliver a unified search system, discovery system, and social system to the Audible mobile experience. It was inspired by the comments of personal conversations that emphasized a desire to be able to quickly and effectively discover and search for enjoyable audio books on the platform. I decided to take on this challenge in the form of a design sprint.

1. Research & Problem Statement

I utilized r/audible as a source of primary insight on where user's pain points were with the search and discovery systems of audible. I also looked at how Audible competitors handled their discovery system. While researching Audible competitors, I found Goodreads. Goodreads deploys a social media system and automatically recommends you books based on your previous reviews. It also has an extensive genre search feature. I found these mechanisms to be something that would benefit the redesign of Audible's search system. Lastly, I wanted to formulate an idea of what was important for users when finding new books. The 2020 Immersive Media Report helped by showing that book purchases are primarily driven by genre, author, and reviews.

Problem Statement: Audible users are interested in finding books that they would enjoy effectively. There is an opportunity to empower these users by providing them with new tools such as reader socialization and fine-tuned search filters to better connect them to books they will likely enjoy and increase their retention on the platform.

2. Building Empathy

Before beginning Ideation on the UI changes to the Audible book discovery system, I wanted to more deeply understand the task flow and desires of the users. After looking into the task flow that already exists on Audible, I found that while it is simple to perform searches, this simplicity has tradeoffs that involve a lack of definable search criteria. Users need to know exact book titles for what they want, limiting their ability for media discovery. For example, users can not filer by author, a key book purchasing factor according to the 2020 Immersive Media Report. The current Audible search features also force users to enter search criteria on two different pages within the UI which could be confusing and frustrating. After these discoveries, I began work on a refined task flow that that expanded on what a user could define for their query while maintaining the current simplicity of Audible's search methodology.
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*Note task flows start on relevant pages in Audible's UI rather than the landing page.

3. Defining and Ideating

Before Ideating on the UI, I created a comprehensive information architecture of the features I intended to add to Audible. This served as a living framework for feature additions to the UI. After developing the information architecture, I moved into the ideation of both features I was hoping to add: a social element to Audible for book discovery, and a refined search tool.

4. Testing

By utilizing the low fidelity Figma prototypes, I was able to test my designs and have conversations with friends and family. This involved giving my paticipants specific tasks such as "Search for a book by author and genre" or "Search for books based on length and reviews". Conducting my research this way allowed for contextual viewing of where user's pain points may be in my new design. Some key insights involved length specification particularly regarding seeing books between two set lengths of time rather than a greater than or less than system. Through conversations after testing, I recieved comments on the desire of being able to find books like other books users had already read and had in their own library. This led to the development of the alternative search mechanism I designed in the section below.

5. Conclusion & Future Work

This was an exciting design sprint to tackle. Search criteria is something that has always interested me and as an audible user I have struggled with finding new listening material. Typically, this comes in the form of conversations with others to see what they are listening to. In the future, I think it would be a fun challenge to design a way for users to quickly see what their friends are listening to on Audible. Perhaps a system where you could see friend's reviews and experiences with other books would be a valuable source of information when deciding which book to listen to next.

Designer(s)

Blaine Hafen

Role(s)

UI/UX Designer & UX Researcher

Date

July 2022

Duration

1 Week

Skills & Software Used

Figma, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro

Portfolio View

Audible Case Study