Project overview
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Jan 2025 - Apr 2025
Skills
Interface Design, Interaction Design, Usability Testing, User Research
Gänder is a mobile app designed to reignite Gen Z’s passion for reading by breaking books into bite-sized “cards,” setting clear, achievable goals, and rewarding progress with a playful tiered system.
I was personally responsible for the main card-based reading interface and the audiobook, bionic and speed reading features.
The Challenge
"How might we motivate GenZ to read?"
Gänder was designed to address a key problem - Gen Z's declining book reading habits are eroding the development of essential skills like critical thinking, focus, and creativity.
The Solution
Motivators - Card Reading
Our research (see later section) found that Gen-Z often found reading daunting.
To combat this, books are divided into manageable chunks called “cards”.
Jakob's Law In Use
By using Jakob’s Law and taking inspiration from popular short-form social media apps, an upward swipe interaction navigates past a card.
Motivators - Tiers
Users reach new tiers as they complete more books. This gamification further motivates readers to keep reading.
Fun Element
Users reach new tiers as they complete more books. This gamification further motivates readers to keep reading.
New Experiences - Audiobook
User research also pointed out that GenZ perceived reading as slow.
To address this, the audiobook feature allows users to turn any book into an audiobook and play it at a speed of their choice.
Voice Annotations
To allow social features and personalization, the audiobook interface allows users to record short voice notes that embed themselves in the book as an annotation
New Experiences - Bionic and Speed Reading
Bionic reading and speed reading to allow users to read faster and easier.
Scoping The Space - We didn't just start with the solution
User Journey Map
We began tackling the problem by creating a user journey map that outlined a week in an average university student's life. This helped us identify the periods when the students scrolled on social media as a potential area where our solution may be used.
False Consensus Effect
When I added “create to do list for the day” as part of a student’s morning routine, my teammate pointed out that it was actually pretty unrealistic for the average university student to do that as part of their regular schedule. I had made the mistake of thinking that the average user is like me.
Interview
We interviewed students on the UBC campus to further understand out target audience. We took away 3 main findings.
Lack of time
Work mindset
Competitive Analysis
We also conducted an analysis of reading apps on the market to better understand what's currently available.
iBooks had a great reading interface but few features to help motivation
DeepStash had a great book recommendation features but poor motivation features.
Fable had great features to help users socialize over the books they were reading but their interface felt cluttered and didn’t focus on the reading interface.
Ideation process
User Flow
After long sessions of brainstorming on Figjam, we created a detailed user flow to map each screen and navigation path within the app. Although we initially explored social “Club” features, we decided against them and chose instead to concentrate on innovating the reading interface and core motivational mechanics.
The Dashboard Conundrum
One of the initial ideas was to use quotes in the dashboard and allow users to preview parts of the book where they left off
Inspired by the Apple Wallet, these preview cards allowed the user to view parts from the book where they left off and easily jump back in.
Feedback from usability testing
However, usability testing with the mid-fi wireframes helped us realize that this interface increased cognitive load and felt cluttered.
We wanted our app to be minimal and reduce cognitive strain. Not overwhelm users with a lot of text from the get-go.
The idea of having a quote at the top of the dashboard was also discarded as it occupied too much space and didn’t help readers jump back into reading.
2nd Iteration
The new iteration of the dashboard featured much less text and let the book covers take the spotlight. The quotes were moved to the bottom, away from initial view so that the focus was on jumping back into reading or picking up a new book.
Reflection
Gänder’s card-based goals and tiered rewards system turn reading into a motivating, achievement-driven journey, while its multimodal interface (audiobook, bionic, speed reading) and personalized recommendations ensure each user’s experience is both accessible and engaging. It’s features are born out of the concerns voiced by the target audience and takes their habits and behaviours into consideration.
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