Laaddu
Laddu is a startup that started as a p2p book lending app and attempts to solve most of the problems surrounding books eventually. I was hired to lead another round of iteration.
The product had already been through more than two ideations but still couldn’t touch the user’s heart. The stakeholder wants to know how it can be improved, and eventually what else can be done. I took responsibility for assembling the strategy, defining the business problem, discovering the market opportunity and finding what the user needs.
Laaddu
p2p book marketplace platform
In 2020, there were 750.89 million physical books and 191 million e-book sold in the US. Laaddu attempts to solve the problems surrounding books.
When I joined the project, the product had already been through more than two ideations but still couldn’t touch the user’s heart. I led another round of iteration to define the business problem, discover the market opportunity and find what the user needs.
Laaddu
p2p book marketplace platform
Laddu is a startup that started as a peer-to-peer book lending app, aiming to solve issues related to the book industry. I was brought on to lead another round of iterations.
As the company struggled to capture the attention of users despite undergoing multiple iterations. The stakeholders were eager to know how to improve the product and what other actions could be taken. I took responsibility for developing a comprehensive strategy that addressed the core business problem, identified the market opportunity, and gained an understanding of the user’s needs.
What I do
Status
Delivery, test, continue expanding
Team
Founder, engineer
Location
Remote
Platform
ios app
Overview
What I do
Team
Founder, engineer
Platform
ios app
Location
Remote
Status
Delivery, test, continue expanding
Background
Laaddu’s founder, a book lover with a passion for reading, faced several issues related to books. She struggled to borrow the books she wanted from the library, had a limited budget to purchase books on Amazon, and didn’t know what to do with finished books. Believing that there were others like her, she founded Laaddu with a mission to solve common problems faced by book lovers.
Problem
Initially, the stakeholder lacked a clear product goal or vision. She integrated features and concepts from Little Free Library and Goodreads to develop a solution that addressed her problems.
The current app allows users to locate available books nearby, track their reading progress, and connect with others who have the books they need. However, the product experience is not seamless, and the stakeholder is seeking to understand how to improve it and explore other possibilities.
Goal
Solution
A peer-to-peer marketplace that provides book management software as a service (SaaS). It will enable individuals to organize and share their book collections and connect with others selling books they desire in their area. Initially, the platform will launch with an iOS app and then expand to a website.
Impact
Background
Laaddu’s founder is a book lover, she has a huge passion for reading and she has lots of different problems around books. For example, she is struggling to borrow the books she wants in the library, where she also doesn’t have the budget to buy all the books she wants for over $500 on amazon. She also has a number of finished books that she doesn’t need anymore but is not sure what she can do for them. She believes there are some other people out there just like her, so she creates Laaddu and under the mission to solve the problems for books.
Problem
Early on, the stakeholder didn’t have a clear goal or vision for the product. She combined features and concepts from Little Free Library and Goodreads to create a solution she felt solved the problems.
In the existing app, users can find available books near them, track their reading progress, and connect with people who have the book they need. However, the product doesn’t seem to have a seamless experience and the stakeholder wants to know what it is, how it can be improved, and eventually what else can be done.
Goal
Goal
Solution
A peer-to-peer marketplace platform for people to organize their books, and find each other when people are selling the books they want by location. It starts with an ios app and will eventually be available on the website.
Outcome
☟how did we get to the solution?☟
☟have more time?☟
How did we get to the solution?
Starts with alignment
After understanding the constraints, specific requirements and goals with the stakeholder. I set up the roadmap to better align the direction to the whole team.
Within budget, data, resource limitations, undertake usability testing and focus on observe the gap in the field study and competitor research to understand what users want, need and expectations
Due to the small usage of the existing app, there is not much data to look at and resources to look for. Without any previous user insight, I started with usability testing to discover how the users think and feel.
As part of the usability testing, I tested the existing app with 13 people to understand how they felt about it and any challenges they encountered.
What users feel in the original/current
experience and design
Most importantly, we learned that without clear product goals and to be able to clearly communicate that to the user. Even putting the features out there, it does not solve the problem and is also hard to attract the right user. To be able to identify the product version, we really need to figure out the real people’s problem.
the original design
Rediscover the opportunity
With the lack of research materials, we need to do more research to understand people’s challenges and solve the right problem. And within a limited budget, I decided to rely more on first hand observation with competitive studies and desktop studies to identify potential opportunities.
Insights from ethnography and field studies
The community contains lots of valuable information to let us understand our potential user group more deeply. And here are the top insights from the 935K members in the fb group.
What the community tells
The community contains lots of valuable information to let us understand our potential user group more deeply. And here are the top insights from the 935K members in the fb group.
What the market tells
To better discover the market possibilities, I not only research the competitor lists from stakeholder but also expand the research into adjacent markets, cross-section of the cohorts. The purpose is learning what problems people are solving.
People pain points that stand out
How might we help people find the book they want in less time and at a lower cost?
I shared my findings with the stakeholder, and we did some brainstorming about the idea and the problem space wanted to focus on. In the end, we are able to come out with a problem statement to create a shared understanding.
Set the north star
Based on the research insights, I and the stakeholder did brainstorming about the possible way to solve the problem with the business opportunities. At the same time, we want to see if the solution can be something to adjust the existing development system to avoid lots of effects and budget for the engineering side. A peer-to-peer book marketplace platform is the solution during the discussion.
Marketplace + Saas = create a happy loop = competitive advantage
However, due to many existing resources and marketplaces out there, we will need something extra to attract users to this new app/platform. In our case, the supply and demand side is equally important. And how can we make both sides “happy” in order to create the loop?
During the user and market research I found out people use several different platforms to read or borrow the books, and people love owning their own “library”. So we decided to focus more on the management system to help people track it.
More focus area based on people’s pain points and needs
We wanted to focus on building the initial experience to address people’s pain point, in order to attract more users.
Once we had our north star and focus areas, I started exploring possible design directions
Seems we have budget limitations, one of the design directions is to make the end-to-end experience within the existing space. It would be a faster product to build and release, as well as being an improvement on the existing experience.
1.
Peer to peer marketplace
People problem
People want to get a specific book they want(or need) to read in a short time frame, but they have a hard time finding it, either due to long waitlists at the library or a limited budget for purchasing the new one.
To design this, here are some thoughts in my mind:
2.
Saas for book management
People problem
People have a hard time organizing and tracking their books because they not only have physical books but also have different types of free ebooks from various platforms and apps.
The existing library screen has two categories, “the book I have read” and “the book I want to read”, which didn’t have much support for the organizing. Here are some of the following questions I try to address:
Next steps
Learning
What I will do differently
Because of budget, we decided to use an unmonitored usability testing platform. When I tried to use it for a low-fi prototype for some initial feedback, I thought I explained enough for the situations, but I am not able to get the feedback we want. One thing is people on the platform didn’t have experience with low-fi tests before and because it is low-fi so it will require lots of guidelines, no matter how detailed I explained it.