Walden Pond is a personalised subscription service that sends its users a little, paper zine, filled with articles they've saved to Pocket. So everything inside, is everything they're interested in.
Together with founder/developer, Ben, we redesigned the user portal to give users more transparency and better control of their zine to avoid unwanted surprises.
Role
User Research
Lo-Fi Prototyping
Usability Testing
How does Walden Pond work?
User finds an interesting online article
User bookmarks article via Pocket app
Walden Pond formats users list of articles into a zine
User reads their zine at their own leisure.
Users can adjust the settings on the website to filter the articles or features they want included in their upcoming zine.
1. Filter out articles that are too short or too long.
2. Change paper colour
3. Include articles with specific tags in Pocket or include articles with specific keywords in the title.
4. Reorder articles in zine e.g. latest to oldest bookmarks
I joined Walden Pond to work on the next steps. But what were the next steps? We asked our users for feedback
Users loved their zine as they could:
- Be encouraged to read off-screen
- Finally read articles marked as ‘read later’ (some had 4000+ articles bookmarked)
- Take their zine to the cafe, park, train etc.
- Have some control over the articles printed in their zine
However, we identified a few problems with the website.
Cluttered
Users thought the website was cluttered with irrelevant information.
View past articles
Users wanted a better way to find past articles. Some were worried that they would be harder to find as their zine collection grows.
Wanted better feature control
Users felt unsure whether they changed their editorial settings correctly. They had to wait until their zine arrived in the mail to find out that it included articles they didn't want.
Article recommendations
Some users were disappointed with their own taste of articles. What were other people reading? Could be worth the read.
We already assumed the website needed improvement as it had little consideration for its users prior to launch.This assumption was validated when users requested for new features. But...some of those requested features were already implemented on the website.
Was the website not clear enough?
View past articles
From the ‘History’ page, users were already able to view their articles that they have read in past zines.
Article Recommendations
From the ‘Blog’, users were already able to see what other articles people have read.
To understand why, we interviewed those who had more to say. We found that users rarely read the blog posts and didn't visit certain pages because of unclear webpage titles.
☁️ How can we improve Walden Pond's website to provide users more transparency and better control before and after their zine has been printed to avoid unwanted disappointment?
We consolidated our user problems and turned them into redesign opportunities.
Visually Simple
The redesign should be visually simplified to reduce clutter, improve navigation and make key features easier to find and use.
Intuitive
The redesign should focus on commonly used interaction patterns.
Article Transparency
The redesign should allow users to view their upcoming, past and other articles other users are reading to ensure they are happy with their article selection and revisit when needed.
Working closely with the developer made it easier to identify our technical limitations early in the design process.
Read only access to a user's Pocket account
Some of Pocket's features like 'tag', 'remove' or 'archive' won't be integrated into Walden Pond's website at this time as we only have read-only access to a user's Pocket. Instead, users have to be redirected to the Pocket app if they want to complete those actions.
Cannot view specific articles in upcoming edition
As this requires a significant restructuring to Walden Pond's architecture, which cannot be implemented at this time. Instead, users can see all the articles within their entire pocket collection that could be in their next zine.
The MVP
- Improving the editorial controls (improve sliders, include inputs, better time controls, toggles)
- Viewing upcoming reads
- Viewing past reads
- Viewing excluded reads
- Suggested articles
- Search functionality of articles
- Additional toggle features
We generally received positive feedback during our user tests and reiterated our mid-fi prototypes in response to users pain points.
Clearer Communication
Users didn't understand a few sections of the Library page even after reading the associated copy. We had to make sure that copy made sense.
Prompts to update preferences
Users requested for prompts that allowed them to be redirected to the Preferences page if the page relied on preferences set by the user.
Why is that article excluded?
Users requested for more information that told them why an article was excluded from a future zine.
'Why is that article excluded? Was the article too short? too long? or..?'
Work in progress - more to come!
Next Project...
Reimagining Mobile
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