Baseline Study
Study Overview
The purpose of the baseline study was to understand the current reading habits of our target audience, college students and young professionals who aspire to read more regularly. We aimed to identify the types of reading materials they engage with, the frequency of their reading sessions, and the factors that obstruct their reading habits. This baseline is intended to inform strategies that can effectively support and encourage the development of consistent reading habits within this target user group.
Study Methodology
For our week-long diary study we asked participants to log their reading habits for 4 days. Participants were asked to log their reading activities and instances where they intended to read but were obstructed. The diary entries were designed to capture both logistical data—such as time and location of reading sessions or obstructions—and content data, including participants’ motivations for reading and the specific materials they read, with an estimated time of 2 minutes per logging session. We also split the study into Reading sessions and Reading obstructions, hoping to gain insight from any time a participant has the intention to read, not just the times that they follow through with it. We reiterated that for the purposes of our study, reading extends to all mediums. As such, we were able to gather both qualitative data about their reasoning, and quantitative data such as frequency.
For our data collection we used a Google form and sent daily reminder emails to participants. At the end of the study, all data was aggregated in a spreadsheet automatically through Google forms for data analysis.
Participant Recruitment
Our recruitment strategy focused on individuals within our target age range, 19-24, who expressed a desire to build a regular reading habit. We developed our screener questionnaire to identify suitable participants, including questions like:
How often do you read?
Do you want to read more?
Do you regard reading as important?
Key Research Questions
The primary questions that the baseline study aimed to address were:
- What are the current reading habits of college students and young professionals who wish to read more regularly?
- What types of reading materials do they prefer, and through which mediums do they access these materials?
- What are the common obstacles that prevent them from reading as much as they intend?
- How do time and location influence their reading activities and the likelihood of encountering obstructions?
- By addressing these questions, we aim to gain insights that can inform our development of interventions that support young adults in starting and maintaining a reading habit.
Raw Data → Synthesis
After collecting and reading through our raw data, we met as a group several times (in class and outside of class) to synthesize and organize our data with the hopes of uncovering key insights about our potential user base.
Affinity Grouping: After writing down little distinct snippets of data on sticky notes, our first step was to affinity map the sticky notes by shared themes and relationships. Affinity mapping helped us determine the broader themes, conflicts, and tensions we might focus our project on.
We discovered that the biggest obstacles to maintaining a reading habit are a busy schedule, a heavy academic workload that already involves lots of reading, a desire to do something “mindless” at the end of the day (i.e. watch TV, scroll on TikTok, often people are motivated to read to be a part of a cultural conversation and to “gain knowledge”, and that people use a mix of mediums from digital, print, to audiobooks, though digital seems to be the most common.
Matrix Mapping: Finally, we built a 2×2 matrix to map out how important some themes seemed to be to users and whether these could be “known” or “unknown”. By this, we mean how actionable is a theme. Do we have enough information about a certain tension in order to affect change upon it?
2×2 Matrix Map
Timeline: We also wanted to establish a timeline of events, frustrations, and obstacles to reading to see if there was a specific time where our intervention might be successful. We discovered that participants usually wanted to read in the morning before the day started but felt overwhelmed with the day’s agenda to ever act on these impulses. For the people who preferred to read at night, they cited being too tired to read as their biggest obstacle.
Timeline of a Participant’s Day (Left: Morning; Right: Night)
Below are our primary takeaways from our raw data synthesis:
Takeaway #1: People want to read but find that their schedules are too busy.
Takeaway #2: Many people find their phones and/or TV to be the biggest distraction to reading or while reading.
Takeaway #3: Reading is too mentally taxing after a long day of work, especially as a student.
Takeaway #4: Many, but not all, participants prefer to read on a phone, tablet, or computer (i.e. digital medium).
Takeaway #5: The biggest motivators for wanting to read more are to be part of the cultural conversation and to gain more knowledge.
System Models
In order to better understand the relationships between different themes and habits, we set about making system models to visualize our thinking. Below, you will see our fishtail cause and effect model and feedback loops.
Fishtail Cause and Effect Diagram from raw data synthesis
Feedback loop
Secondary Research
In our Comparative Analysis, we selected 10 apps that are related to our problem space through both superficial and deep features. Each competitor offered unique insight into habit-building functionality, appropriate user engagement methods, or general approaches in the reading problem space. Our 2×2 map evaluates the apps on two axes: Low Commitment – High Commitment, and Minimalist – Maximalist. Some of the key insights gained from the comparative analysis are as follows:
- Gamification and Habit Reinforcement
Apps like Forest, Opal, and Strava all employ gamification to engage users through specific milestones. We have also seen gamification in reading-specific apps like Bookly and Bookmory, which provide reading streaks and progress tracking, although with an added cumbersome manual input step. From this insight, we are looking into how to best use gamification in a useful, ethical, and efficient way. Gamification techniques, being extrinsic motivators, might not be enough for users to overcome high effort barriers like manual input, but could be a helpful tool.
2. Social Engagement, Accountability, and Competition
Apps like Strava, Goodreads, and Storygraph leverage social interactions as motivators by embedding a social network into the app. Forest also includes social interaction and the possibility for competition, but it is generally a feature aimed at power users. Social accountability can be a powerful motivator, but in our research and reflection, we found that social competition can be an even more effective motivator. One example is the “off-label” use of Forest, where friend groups put together a money pool and whoever grows the largest forest by the end of the week wins the pool. This insight actually produced a lot of interesting ideas during brainstorming and got us to a Fantasy Football analogy, which we are very interested to explore further.
3. Minimalist Design
Minimalist design and lack of in-app distractions were such a high priority for us that it became one of our axes. In addition to the general design trend towards minimalism, we found that our app needs to find a happy medium in which the app is “sticky” (users keep coming back to it), but it does not keep the users on it for too long (it isn’t doom scrolling). We found that apps with similar goals, like Forest, Opal, and Blinkist, all have quite minimalist design and a relatively small but well constructed number of features. This insight is guiding how we will approach not only the UI design, but also the user experience and functionality design.
As for our Literature Review, we analyzed 10 articles about various aspects of reading and reading habit formation. This research provided valuable insights into common barriers to reading, shifts in reading behavior due to digital innovation, and motivational factors that influence reading habits. Some of the key findings from the literature were:
- Reading is common and prevalent, but not always for books
One of the papers mentioned that college students spend a significant time reading, but much of it is on digital platforms, including social media. Another paper mentioned that academic and extracurricular reading compete with digital distractions and social obligations, leading to lower engagement with long-form texts. This insight helped us examine how we approach our topic, do we think about reading in general, do we pick a smaller niche like reading for pleasure?
- Digital reading dominates, but what about reading comprehension?
A paper mentioned that young readers overwhelmingly prefer digital formats, especially smartphones. Another paper argued that audiobooks and e-books expand reading opportunities by integrating easier into daily routines. However, another paper noted that reading comprehension is generally higher with print than with digital mediums, particularly in early academic stages. This insight helped us understand our potential users better, and the personalization they might require.
- Attitudes and environment shape reading habits
A couple of papers touched on the important motivators and demotivators to reading. External factors such as family influence, academic promotion, and accessibility to reading materials play a crucial role in fostering reading habits. This insight was helpful in getting us to examine what outside factors might contribute to the success or failure of building a reading habit, and how we can shape those outside influences.
Proto-Personas
Persona #1: Data-Driven Dave
Persona #1: Data-Driven Dave
| Drawing | Name: | Data-Driven Dave |
| Activated Role: | Graduate student in Computer Science | |
| Goal: | To read more research papers due to their emphasis in his graduate studies. | |
| Motivation: | Reading can help him gain knowledge to contribute to scholarly discussions in class and also give him a knowledge boost as he furthers his career in academia – being up to date with tech is important! | |
| Conflict: | Not a big reader in the past, and research papers are hard to read all in one sitting without distractions. | |
| Attempt to solve: | Created a reading checklist for research papers relating to his major, goes to the library for reading sessions, annotates and keeps track of his readings | |
| Setting/environment: | Somewhere quiet, at the library or in his room | |
| Tools/skills: | A passion for computer science, keeps to-do-lists, lots of readings are accessible online on Canvas, has a smartwatch | |
| Routines: | Typical graduate course schedule with readings due each week (although does them last minute), looks through phone in the morning and at night, not-so-strict routine with several all nighters for exams | |
| Habits: | Refreshes Canvas often to see assignment deadlines, always on laptop, pays attention to notification on smartwatch |
Persona #2: F.B.B.B (Find Better Book Brooke)
| Drawing | Name: | F.B.B.B (Find Better Book Brooke) |
| Activated Role: | Liberal Arts College Student | |
| Goal: | Make it a habit to read specifically for pleasure rather than to learn | |
| Motivation: | Reading can help her start the day better, unwind before bed, or de-stress during the day, especially since her friends are reading the same books and say positive things | |
| Conflict: | Not sure how to find time to read, busy with school, and would rather relax with other forms of entertainment | |
| Attempt to solve: | Setting reading goals, using various sources to search for books like Goodreads and Google, and keeping a book on the bedside table | |
| Setting/environment: | Anywhere quiet, preferably her room | |
| Tools/skills: | Calendar scheduling, Goodreads, Google, any source that can search for books | |
| Routines: | Wake up, go on phone, complete class or work during the day, and then wind down with phone time or tv before bed | |
| Habits: | Goes on phone a lot before bed and in the morning when waking up, watches a lot of tv |
The two personas that my group narrowed down to were Data-Driven Dave (we’ll call him DDD) and Find Better Book Brooke (FBBB). When grouping together our individual personas, we saw the most differences in our persona’s goals/motivation and tools/skills. There were two main buckets for motivators to read, the first being the desire to read for knowledge gain and learning, and the second being the desire to read for pleasure in order to replace “unproductive” habits. DDD was meant to be the former persona, who understands the value of reading for his graduate studies and was already equipped with skills like to-do lists or habits for continuously checking his Canvas assignments and deadlines due to his prioritization of his studies. On the other hand, FBBB focuses mainly on making her day more productive and relaxing with reading incorporated in her routine, but as most other college students, she is easily distracted by other forms of entertainment. What is important to note here is that a persona’s already existing habits or skills plays a big factor in their conflicts and motivations to read, for example, a persona who currently calendar blocks their schedule will likely be worried about time management and where to incorporate reading into their routine. Thus, when we considered solutions, my group kept “general” and “personal” factors that contribute to difficulty in reading in mind. For “general” factors, we looked to similarities in all of our personas, which were a desire to ignore distractions, sit through a longer reading session, and settle down in a quiet place – all of these are assumed to be wanted by the user. Personal factors may include calendar blocking for reading times or notifications/reminders to read, in which it may be up to personal preference, in which we look to our persona’s current skills and conflicts. The journey maps we synthesized for our two personas will differ the most in that regard.
Journey Maps
Link to higher quality Data-Driven Dave Journey map: Data-Driven Dave
Link to higher quality Find Better Book Brooke Journey map: Better Book Brooke
When looking at the journey maps for FBBB and DDD, we see a pattern of early morning optimism mixed with end-of-day guilt when it comes to meeting reading goals or finishing up work in a to-do list. Both personas had readily planned days and continuously kept their career/academic priorities in mind throughout the day, which shows a commitment to better time management. However, there was a fine line between an idealistic schedule and a realistic schedule that FBBB tried to follow, which meant her guilt stemmed from her inability to keep up with her own expectations. Meanwhile, DDD focused less on catering towards a set schedule or calendar block like FBBB did, in which he followed a todo list and deadlines, leading him to cram more. The bottom line of the our synthesis of these two journey maps showed that there are several “general” solutions that we can apply to both FBBB and DDD to make reading a better experience, for example, by taking into consideration the guilt or overwhelm that either persona may feel at certain times of the day. We also want to keep in mind the realistic schedule of both of these personas when developing a solution, which should be less idealistic as that can cause overwhelm.
