Daily Challenge #1: A single detail view of a book discovery app

Today’s challenge was: A single detail view for a Book Discovery App to help college students.

• Difficulty level: Easy
• Time to solve the challenge: 15 minutes
• Assumption: Here’s the assumption is the college student is a returning user

Thoughts leading to the design

For this design, I took inspiration from the website Built in NYC, which provides a single detailed view of their job section. I quite like that style and have used that as a reference for sketching for this Book Discovery App for College Students. (On a side note, their app version wasn’t as good as the website one, and I think they should follow the same selection and single view process.)

The final design 

This is the final design that I came up with. It’s a two step process and you have the landing screen (main screen) and the next screen. 

Main Screen: User opens the app –> lands on main screen –> user selects the genre they’re wishing to find books in –> a list of books appear at the bottom, with each book showing it’s rating and description –> user scrolls through the list within that genre –> user selects a book –> lands on the next screen.

Next screen: The screen opens to the selected book, with more information and options to “Add to favorites,” “Read now” and “Back”. Here I have assumed, the user is returning and their profile is already available. In case it’s a new user, they will experience the same flow, and only when they select “add to favorites” or “read now,” will they be asked to sign up.

Draft sketches to get to the design

These are some of my sketches that I made before getting to the design that I finally liked. I didn’t like where my first version was leading, as it was becoming a three-step process, which needed three screens. The flow was: Main Screen –> user selects the genre –> takes you to the next screen showing list of all the books within that genre –> user selects the book –> app takes you to the next screen with all details and user can then add to favorites, or begin reading now.

Added features for future

In the future, under the “read now” section, there should be a “listen” and “read” function. The app should have the option for audible as well.