Assessing the effectiveness of Goodreads' features in helping with the tracking, rating, and organization of books that users have already read.
I performed a heuristic evaluation based on Luma Institute’s 10 heuristics. This process involves completing tasks while identifying design choices that could confuse or hinder the user’s actions.
Add a book to ‘read’ list
Rate a book
Check to see the book added to the ‘read’ list
Create a new book list
I uncovered four major usability issues that disrupted users’ workflows and mental models:
I couldn’t easily add shelves beyond the three default options, leading to confusion about navigation within the system.
The search bar behaved differently on the “Home” page versus the “My Books” page, causing inconsistencies in actions.
I had to reload the site to see their changes, a frustrating experience that hindered usability.
System feedback was often unclear or delayed, making it difficult to understand if their actions were successful.
To broaden the context, I evaluated two competitors: CandL and Notion. Both offer different approaches to book tracking and organizational tools.
Both are private, freemium websites
Non social book tracker
Track all books in one place - can make plans, add reviews, and goals.
Clean interface; tools always on left sidebar.
Subscription required for adding shelves
Intuitive design with clear text hierarchy
Most usable
Productivity and note-taking web application
Offers organizational tools like task management, project tracking, to-do lists, and bookmarking.
Multiple templates available
Extensive customization options
Requires manual input of book details
Initial complexity, becomes easy with familiarity
Usable but steep learning curve
While both competitors had their advantages, Goodreads had more significant usability issues, which negatively affected user experience and disrupted users’ mental models.
I conducted usability testing with participants from different demographics to gather insights into real-world interactions with Goodreads.
Number of participants: 6
Demographics: India (3), Mexico (1), UK (1), USA (1)
Gender: 3 Male, 3 Female
Age: 19-49 year old
Criteria: Participants did not have a Goodreads account but were readers (frequency varied).
✅
Everyone liked the multiple features that Goodreads offers.
✅
They also liked the ease of searching for books.
✅
The “Want to Read” button was eye-catching and easily accessible.
❌
Everyone liked the multiple features that Goodreads offers.
❌
They also liked the ease of searching for books.
❌
The “Want to Read” button was eye-catching and easily accessible.
Transcript: I think here it would add. Oh. Sorry. My books....my special pages. Uh...Now this is a very... this is going into -0.05 (talking about rating the difficulty of completing the task of adding book to newly created shelf).
This quote highlights the user frustration with basic tasks, like adding a book to a new shelf, due to poor navigation cues.
This quote highlights the user frustration with basic tasks, like adding a book to a new shelf, due to poor navigation cues.
Based on the usability testing and heuristic evaluation, I identified several areas where additional research is needed to optimize the user experience on Goodreads. These research questions aim to uncover solutions to improve the platform’s functionality and usability:
Users struggled to understand the distinction between shelves and tags. More research is needed to determine how to present these concepts clearly and intuitively.
Users had difficulty locating key features, such as the secondary search bar on the “My Books” page. Exploring more effective visual cues or navigational aids could improve the ease of information retrieval. In the video, the visual cues/ navigation were not enough since the participant could not spot the smaller second search bar which says ‘search and add books’ on that ‘My Book’ page, even after looking around it twice.
It is unclear which organizational structure for the “Want to Read” button would best suit users’ needs. Research should explore different layouts or default orders to improve usability.
The current process for editing user activity requires several steps and page reloads. Investigating alternative, more efficient methods could streamline the user workflow, there could be quicker ways to let them take actions without page redirection.
This needs wider cultural research since all 3 participants from India used the “Profile” option to navigate to shelves whereas the 3 participants from other parts of the world used the “My Books” tab. Further research can determine whether merging these sections would reduce navigation confusion and improve the overall user experience.
Instead of using different design styles for the same UI pattern, use the most successful one.
Improve the visibility and accessibility of the “Add Shelf” button to reduce user frustration.
There are many ways of doing the same tasks and research helps us come across such fascinating findings.
For my next research, I would think about what to say in cases where the participants feel lost. This time I struggled to answer their questions without leading them on/ directly guiding their actions.
Research fuels research. I learnt that it is okay to have questions at the end of the research since it shows that there are more things to be explored.
