BookSeal is an inclusive reading community that uses personalized recommendations to help readers discover stories that match their interests while enabling them to share favorites and connect with fellow book lovers.
The project focuses on creating a vibrant, content-driven experience that treats reading as a social act, not a cataloging task.
Deliverables
Tools
Home, Discover, Book, and Activity — each screen designed to serve a distinct moment in the reader's journey, from serendipitous discovery to daily progress.
Home
Personalized reading recommendations from multiple angles — and an easy way to track current reads.
Discover
Smart searching and preference-based recommendations to surface books readers will actually finish.
Book
Rich book details and community insights — with one-tap rating, status updates, and list management.
Activity
Community feed with discussions and sharing — switch between friends-only and public explore mode.
Digital reading is growing fast, but current solutions still fail to meet readers' expectations. Existing apps treat books as data. The social, emotional side of reading is completely missing.
No social layer
Apps like "Goodreads" feel transactional, not communal. There's no ambient sense of what friends are reading or why.
Poor discovery
Algorithmic recommendations miss personal taste. Readers want curation from people they trust, not engagement metrics.
Low engagement
Without momentum or community context, digital reading feels isolating and easy to abandon.
From the user interviews, three major themes emerged. The same unmet need is discovered: readers want connection, not just cataloging.
Recommendation
Readers rely on trusted friends over algorithms, but no app captures this social graph.
Search
Finding books that genuinely match personal taste is frustrating with existing tools.
Environment
Reading digitally feels isolating; users crave community and shared momentum.
"No stimuli, not focused and not interested"
— The major reasons users quit reading in digital formats
Transformed key insights from interviews and theme clustering into three personas — giving the team a shared language for design decisions and ensuring every feature was tied to a real user need.
Mapped the full reading journey across all three personas to identify friction points. "No stimuli, not focused, not interested" — these became the design targets that shaped every major interaction.
Each round of iteration was driven by usability testing and SUS scores — which improved with every cycle. Designs moved from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes as clarity on user needs increased.
Research defines the problem
Clear insights made every design decision easier to defend and more likely to land.
Stay user-centric under pressure
Personas and testing kept us honest when we were tempted to design for ourselves.
Accessibility isn't a checkbox
For a reading app, text contrast and tap targets are non-negotiable from day one.
Validate assumptions earlier
Intuition-led choices cost rework. Lightweight testing earlier would have saved later iterations.