My friends and I currently use Goodreads and Storygraph to track our reading. Recently, we've wished these apps had better navigation, more social features, and better book recommendations.
Inspired by Yu & Me Book's focus on immigrant stories (which reflect our reading) and community-events, I designed Yu & Read.
product
visual design
user research
concept app & design
winter 2024
UMM... WHAT IS?
PRODUCT FEATURE- YU & READ
Goodreads and Storygraph already have book rating and tracking features.
Yu & Read adds to those basic features and prioritized readers who want to be involved in community book events.
Yu & Me books is based on NYC. But many of my friends (including me!) don’t live in NY.
Yu & Read’s partner bookstores are other immigrant-owned bookstore in Yu & Read’s network. That way, we can all enjoy events in our own local communities. LDR doesn’t mean you can’t support small businesses!
One thing my friends and I DIDN’T want was for Yu & Read to become a social media app. So, we defined social interactions as “recommendations” to limit how users can interact with each other.
This frames socialization as reading-focused and allows positive reinforcement only.
Of course, we want to maintain the basic features of a book-rating app: find books, rating them, and adding books to your reading list.
ZOOMING IN/ PROCESS
My design process follow iterations that are led by user feedback (in this case FaceTime calls with my friends!)
Here are a few examples.
While designing the first iterations of Yu & Read, I realized I was designing just another (but prettier) book-rating app. But where’s the value there? A key decision I made was to make Yu & Read community-focused.
This meant adding features liked Bookstore Partners and Local Events. It also meant that I needed to organize pages and navigation in a way that reflected a mental model that prioritized community.
Recommendations as communication- I wanted to also focus on socialization for a user’s chosen community (rather than mass socialization.) I also noticed that my friends and me were constantly giving each other books recommendations.
Rather than designing a notification or ‘social’ page, I narrowed the app’s focus to value recommendations as forms of activity.
Beli (restaurant rating), BeReal (social media), & LetterBoxd (movie rating) were apps I looked to for inspiration. These apps are very picture-forward AND would likely have a high frequency of posts. Eating a meal or watching a movie takes much less time than reading a book.
As a result, the card design shifted to reflect medium. The main content of the landing page are events (more timely things.)
Making Yu & Read community and event focused was a big part of what makes it feel like a product of Yu & Me Books. I investigated their store and merchandise branding to make the app look the part too.
REFLECTION