- Help people find books to read and give them a platform to share it
- Three goals: users' goals, GR's goals, and now Amazon's goals ()
- why is the about page and their story not being shared?
- Connect with or streamline to Amazon's service and experience. If Amazon has streamlined purchases, why not streamline book discovery?
- Connect with Amazon incrementally.
- Encourage people to read more and give them incentives
- Find out what the goals of the user are and design around that
- Focus down what the functions of the site are in order to facilitate the user's experience
- Add an element of delight for the user to reinforce GR's values and keep users using the site and service
- people enjoy tracking their books
- many options for users and authors
- strong, vast database
- despite accessibility and design, lots of users who are committed
- highest number of features/capabilities than most book-related sites
- user base falls off after a while (typical with a lot of social media)
- not a big push on wanting to read more / types of users who are going to get more out of it are the ones who read a lot
- overwhelming for a first-time user because there are so many features and a lot of content
- not obvious or intuitive
- users not feeling connected to others or to service
- what if you don't have any friends? How do you get friends?
- two step method to add friends
- no clear distinction between "follow" and "friend", the latter which includes follow.
- by the time the book is done, user could forgot about service
- design doesn't look "current" or "trendy"
- nothing makes them preferable over something else like Amazon, notepad
- Amazon relationship isn't made clear
- gamifying or engaging the user through challenges
- celebrity or famous personality endorsement could be a feature
- GR as a brand, a living, breathing brand.
- bring delight
- mascot? librarian? bookworm? bookmark? (bookmarq)
- improving accessibility (disability, literacy (from both a language barrier and self-development/education perspective), poverty line/income, device or internet availability/capability)
- connect with public libraries and bookstores (geo location of books even!)
- recommendations on a more consistent basis
- book clubs
- text and/or other ways to reach users
- find sub-genres or more info on the "classics" or their authors
- reaching a younger demographic
- reader drop off rate can continue or get worse
- more distractions
- competitors designing a more fluid experience
- competitors focus on ebooks and bridge/streamline experience with ebook readers
- Amazon could completely kill the niche market that is GR.
- more established social network could kill the service (eg. Apple, Facebook, etc)
- Give the text room to breathe to improve the reading experience, and call out important actions on the site
- Simplify layout, so content and key features are easy to find
- Bring in more hierarchy so the user can figure out the actions of the app