My project started when my partner, who loves using Audible, ran into a frustrating issue. He was reading a series and, following the app's suggestions, accidentally jumped from the first book to the fifth! He didn’t realize the mistake until he did a quick Google search. This mix-up showed us that Audible isn't great at showing the right order of books in a series. Seeing how this could annoy so many users, I decided to tackle this problem for my case study.
First-generation college students, specifically who come from underserved communities often lack personalized support , mentorship and resources. This gap can result in feelings of isolation, academic struggles, and increased drop-out rates.
My goal is to develop an inclusive platform that offers personalized mentorship and resources to empower first-generation college students, guiding them through higher education and into successful career paths.
To fully understand the scope of the problem and validate its existence beyond just my partner's experience, I decided to take a deeper dive into the problem. I explored Audible-related discussion groups and subreddits. What I discovered was a community with similar frustrations and confusion around book sequences in multi-volume series. The users were clearly voicing a need for a mechanism within the app that would provide explicit information about the order of books in a series.
When a user searches for "Stormlight Archive" series in the Audible app, this is the exact result. For someone who is new to this series, there is no way to know which book to read first because the order of the books is not listed. This can be frustrating and confusing as it is not always clear how to discover other books in series within the app.
The search result displays the book "Rhythm of War" as the first option despite it being the fourth book in the series. Additionally, “You may also enjoy...” section on Title Detail Page, does not recommend or display other books in Stormlight Archive series.
With a good grasp of the users' pain points, my goal was to devise a solution that would enable users to easily identify and follow the order of books in a series without needing to leave the app.
After evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each design, I chose Version 1 as the optimal solution as it adhered to Audible's original design while addressing the user's problem. The aim was to seamlessly incorporate the feature into the app to avoid user confusion.
The final designs outline interactions across the Homepage, Title Detail Page, and Rate and Review Page, providing distinct paths for users to explore and access the series title.
I implemented a 'Next up in Series' section on the Homepage, displaying the next book in the series the user is currently listening to
I integrated the feature into the Title Detail page, allowing users to view all books in a series with a single click
Users are now provided with information about the book's number and order on the Rate and Review page upon finishing the book, streamlining their experience and enhancing usability
To put my design solution to the test, I carried out usability tests using the Maze platform. Each of the five participants were active Audible subscribers with a history of listening to multi-volume series.
Task Summary
To establish a basis for comparison, I instructed the same participants to perform identical task, searching for "Stormlight Archive" series by Brandon Sanderson, but this time using the version of their own Audible app that doesn't include the new feature.
Task Summary Graph
In my Audible case study, I identified an edge case where users purchase all books in a series at once. This behavior, while uncommon, highlights the need for specific functionality: the app must automatically order these books correctly in the user's library and clearly display each book's sequence number. Addressing this ensures that even less typical user behaviors are catered to, enhancing overall usability.
%402x.svg){kind=icon}
%402x.svg){kind=icon}