Amazon Kindle
Updating and creating a new experience for Kindle users: Reading Statistics!
Role:
-
Lead Ux Researcher
-
Lead Ux Designer
-
Lead Ui Designer
February 2025 - March 2025
Overview:
Amazon launched a software ( Amazon kids and kids+) in 2012. This is an account for kids for reading and keeping track of goals and such. This feature offers ways to keep track of reading goals for kids and ways to keep track of limited statistics, for example, achievements, daily goal, pages read, minutes read, books finished, and looked up words. This feature is only available if you pay a subscription and sign in to a kids account.
The goal of this case study was to design and create a reading statistics feature for the kindle, that would be easy to navigate and easy to enjoy for parents, adults, and teens that want to keep track of their reading goals and statistics.
The Process
I followed the four phases of Ux design. I am to incorporate the key phases of Discovery, Definition, Ideation and Implementation in all of my projects.
Understanding the Problem and Gathering Insights
To have a deeper understanding of our readers and pinpoint any frustrations or wants about what the Kindle currently offers I conducted 5 user interviews, looked into reviews , did a competitve analysis, and looked into current E-reader trends. After collecting the information from the interviews and further research , I conducted affinity mapping to synthesize the pains identified. I grouped these problems under common themes and features in the platform.
Key Findings
-
Kindle users and readers alike expressed how they felt they would also like to be able to keep track of their goals statistics for reading, but not behind a paywall or through a kids version.
Wire-framing Solutions
Based on the problems discovered above, I then worked on addressing the user pains by coming up with potential solutions.
-
Establishing a clear visual hierarchy by grouping related fields
-
Creating new pages for the reading statistics page
I quickly sketched and created basic wireframes to gather information from our users on the overall navigation, layout, and hierarchy of the pages.
Validating The Designs
I conducted moderated usability testing sessions with our users to understand if the designs solved the user pain points. I came up with a script and a list of tasks for them to do, including scenarios going to to the statistics page and interacting with the statistics.
During the sessions I observed how the users interacted with the prototype and navigated through the pages and if they were able to get to the statistics page and how they interacted with the page. The usability sessions revealed that:
-
100% of the users were able to finish the tasks which showed that finding the stats page and books in a certain genre page was easy to find
-
60% of the users thought the categories chosen needed more expansion on them and thought the books by mood were redundant because they were too similar to books by genre. This shows that we may need to create more wireframes and pages expanding more on the information.
-
100% of the users thought that they would be more inclined to buy the kindle if it had this feature. which shows that it would be a good business idea to add it, so that sales go up.
Final Designs and High Fidelity Mockups
I created my high fidelity mockups and final interactions of the prototype in figma. I followed the Amazon Kindle style guide as much as possible. I kept the color scheme black and white to match the Kindle. Then i did a final UX review of my pages and interactions to ensure that they were aligned with the designs before it would go live.
Results and Takeaways
The solution that I came up with for this case study was that: I created a page where users may be able to keep track of their reading goals and statistics. the stats include ways to keep track of their reading and and ways to keep track of their reading by genre, pace, # of pages, and author diversity. For the stats page I added buttons and ways to go into more detail about the stats. with clicking see more it will take you to a page that shows the books in a certain genre, page count, or by author and more. Clicking at the top buttons will show you the books in that category as well. As a result, adding a statistics page led to 75% more people saying that they would be interested in buying the Kindle if that feature existed. Also, adding a deeper level to the options of the statistics lead to 100% more people enjoying the page overall!
Key Takeaways:
-
Plan ahead of testing sessions, so that there are users lined up and ready to test and interview
-
Iterate, iterate, iterate reworking designs is an expected process to do throughout out the whole timeframe of the project.
-
When following a company's study guide make sure everything is pixel perfect.
-
If there are ways to make the design more user centric find ways to do that
Other Work
Let's Connect!
LinkdIn