Our user persona is your average STEM college student who understands the value of reading over unproductive actions like scrolling through your phone. She is a user that frequently plots her meetings and events into her Google calendar and has an ideal routine that she creates at the start of every quarter to better herself. So, if we were to analyze her reading habits over time, we’ll see that she definitely has the motivation and intent to read, but life can get in her way – a good reading app should be able to find stress-free workarounds in those situations. Having busy schedules and other priorities in life, along with the constant distraction of phones, social media, or other forms of digital entertainment, has been a consistent obstruction across all three of my interviewees who participated in the diary study. However, what my interviews found was that college students enjoy planning out their days and their routine, with all indicating that reading should be done as either a night or morning routine, and will usually have schedules or online calendars planned out with their daily tasks. This is a great tool and habit for students to have, but when reading is added, there is a fine line between being optimistic and being far from realistic – and setting unrealistic expectations for yourself can definitely be a big de-motivator. The journey map will display what these tensions in the persona of Wistful Winnie look like as she goes through your average 10-week academic quarter (finals and all) while attempting to stick to her reading routine.
The user journey map is divided into four buckets of time, each representing certain weeks of the academic quarter that may evoke different behaviors or actions from our user as her priorities shift. There are several behavior trends that are prominent in each time period. The first two weeks of class are when students are shopping for courses or just reviewing the syllabus, in which the user will tend to feel more optimistic or excited about the new quarter. This includes actions like setting up their calendar, making an ideal reading routine and goals, and buying leisure and personal growth books. During the ramp up weeks, our user may begin with sticking to their initial reading routine but may find themselves slipping up whenever a midterm comes along the way or exhaustion starts building up after consecutive class hours, in which the preferred relaxation activity would not be reading but other forms of entertainment. In pre-finals weeks, the user’s priorities shift towards catching up in classes and studying for finals, and we’ll see changes in genres read such as casual, leisure books to reading materials that supplement current courses. The user may now face feelings of stress or anxiety from their current routine not being what they would have hoped, and the lack of consistency in reading may cause the reader to drop books completely. A sporadic sleep schedule may form due to the new work overload, and the student now no longer follows routine and prioritizes to-do list items rather than blocked-out time periods on the calendar for tasks like reading or gym. During finals week, we see that the student’s calendars and to-do lists may be outdated, and no reading is done to focus on wrapping up any exams. From a holistic perspective, this journey map shows how reading habits and interests change with priorities, and rather than having the reader commit to reading consecutively or only certain genres of books, an app that encourages reading should be one that is stress-free and accommodates for a user’s sporadic life.
