Building Book DNA: What we learned from nine 1-hour Zoom sessions with our first beta testers
Plus: what we're shipping in the next 2 weeks...
Every 3 weeks, I share notes on building Book DNA.
We’re building a private, personal way to track your reading and get deeply personalized book recommendations. Think Goodreads, but for readers who want a calm, private space to track what they read, keep notes, and explore books that match their Book DNA. Like Spotify or Pandora, but for books.
Want to help shape it? Apply to be a beta tester! And a huge thank you to our 750+ members! Readers and authors can join, and more perks are coming as we grow.
I am feeling…
Over the last 2 weeks, I’ve held 9 1-hour Zoom sessions with our first beta users. They were incredibly helpful, and we found some problems we need to fix. The best part was that 6 of the 9 testers felt the app had enough for them to start logging their books. 🥳
We will see if that holds up in practice, but it was fantastic to hear, and it backs up my own day-to-day experience using it (as it has replaced my previous method, which was a spreadsheet).
What we learned from nine 1-hour Zoom sessions with our first beta testers
The good news is that our testers rated the app easy to use.
This was really important to me, as I wanted something that made sense intrinsically rather than the chaos of Goodreads. I want this app to feel calm and easy to navigate, and so far, we are doing well.
What surprised me?
Every tester liked our rating system over stars. That was awesome to hear, as I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case. Our system is designed to capture how “you” felt about the book, as that will enable us to deliver much better book recommendations in the long term.
A lot of my worries about the scope and quality of our book database were alleviated by a really good, easy-to-use “add missing book” option. I wasn’t expecting that, and it was good to hear. We still have a lot of improvements to make with our book database, but that gives us some breathing room.
What features are we building due to user feedback?
Reading page (dashboard)
One great piece of feedback we got is that many testers wanted to see what they are currently reading in its own area, rather than at the top of the “My log” screen. And it sounds like they wanted a more dashboard-like view to get an overview of everything.
In my own usage, I found similar, and we are working to build this now.
Book series tracking
This tested really well, and it is something I want 😀 . We are working to finalize the design now so we can build it later this year.
Stats (simple to start)
Stats were very popular with the majority of our beta testers. We are also working to finalize the design of this feature.
I’ll share more down the road 😃.
We found two main areas of UX confusion.
Adding a book to your TBR that you have already read
About half of our testers got confused about why there was an “Add TBR” button next to a book they had already read. Functionally, they understood that once you clicked the button, it was added to the TBR, but it still felt a bit confusing.
Instead, we are looking at replacing that button with one that says “+ Read again” if you already read the book to make it clearer.
And, then we would add a Smart TBR item where you can see how many books in your TBR are books you have already read at least once.
We still need to test this proposed fix with users.
Star icon & the read next queue
About half of our testers found it confusing to click the star icon to add a book to their “read next” queue. The “read next” queue is a list of books in your TBR that you want to read next.
We are currently testing a switch to a bookmark icon like this:
And then on the top left menu, making sure that it is clear with the same icon and showing the number of books within both.
We are testing this improvement now to see if it avoids any confusion.
What we’re shipping in the next 2 weeks
First, we are prioritizing any serious bugs that our users have reported.
We always prioritize any serious bugs that our users hit.
Second, for the next two weeks, we are focused on UX improvements that testers helped us see:
Add missing buttons to add books you are reading or listening to under the “currently reading” section (currently, the only way to do this is to add the book to TBR and then mark it as reading).
Keep our success messages visible until the page fully refreshes. We’ve found that this increases trust in the app, as users can see where a book went when they log it or mark it as “reading.”
Improve our messaging around “add missing book” so users know our team will add the book’s metadata and cover.
Fix an issue where book cover images were slightly blurry under the “currently reading” section.
Improving a bunch of text on page two of our rating process based on user feedback.
Fix the issue where scrolling in a modal would sometimes scroll the page beneath it (annoying).
Rename “series notes” and “author notes” to series/author history. We found that this cleared up a lot of confusion.
Switching the gear icon to text to ensure users notice that they can change the date option settings.
And, lastly, bigger improvements:
A big round of improvements to our book database and search
Improving how we weight books so that more common books show up first in search, and we put a bit more weight on the exact match for book titles.
Integrating book series data into search
Improving search so that if you are looking for an author’s name, it can still try to anticipate what you are searching for.
Making it so that any books users add manually go into our main book database and our small librarian team. That way, any books our users add go through our normal automated/manual systems to add book metadata, editions, and a cover.
Adding audiobook support so you can mark your listening progress.
What is going on outside of Book DNA?
I am headed to Greece for a two-week vacation with my family (my son's spring break). I’m excited, as I haven’t been to Greece in ~20 years. I can’t wait for the delicious food, and hopefully the weather is nice!
What am I reading now?
I just finished…
The Devil In The White City: Big thanks to Ben for the recommendation! It is about the Chicago World Fair, the birth of the modern world, and a creepy serial killer. It was a fantastic read that made me very thankful for modern medicine, antibiotics, vaccines, and a semi-functional police force with database technology.
I read books #1 through #5 of the Iron Crucible series by T.K. Blackwood. This is a fun alt-history look at the Cold War as WW3 breaks out. They are Clancy-like but much shorter and less dense. I’ve enjoyed them, and I’ve got two more in the series.
I am reading...
Status and Culture by W. David Marx. This was my brother’s pick for our family book club, and it has been interesting so far.
Rust Skies by T.K. Blackwood: Book #6 in the Iron Crucible series, fun alternative history fiction set during the Cold War as WW3 rages.
Have a good weekend,
Ben
P.S. Spring is here!
