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June 19, 2023

#148 - (User) Actions Speak Louder

On my approach to building out a new Plus feature, upgrade slowdowns, and a fun social media experiment. 😄

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#148 | 19 June 2023

(User) Actions Speak Louder

 
One of the features that we plan to offer as part of our Advanced Stats Plus transition is the ability for subscribers to create their own custom charts.

Prior customer research has led us to believe that this feature would be a valuable addition to the plan, but that doesn't tell us how it should work in practice.

Last week I sat down several times to draft a survey that would help me to figure out how to build the user interface and user flow...
 
A collage of 4 different types of charts. Top left is a line chart with two lines showing books and pages read per month within a year. Bottom left is a pie chart showing split of moods read. Top right is a pie chart showing split of pace read. Bottom right is a bar chart showing a user's star ratings.

...and it was really hard to avoid asking leading questions or not stray into the land of the hypothetical, neither of which are the most helpful or effective when doing this type of research.

So, instead of trying to force it — which is often a sign something isn't right — I decided to change strategy! 😎

I reckon I have enough information and intuition on this to build a very basic, but functional, first version of this feature.

We'll beta launch it and see what our users do! 

What type of charts do they create? Does anybody even create any charts? 👀

Time will tell, but our users' actions will speak louder than their words in this case and, based on the feedback we get, we'll hopefully be able to iterate on this first draft to create a popular, powerful, and easy-to-use feature! 🤞🏾
 

Since last time...
 

Most of my time has been spent working on some software upgrades, and they've not gone as smoothly as I would have liked, so that's set me back even further on my product goals... 😩

I did manage to continue work on the extra stats options for Plus users though:
 
Screenshot of the top of the stats page, where there is text that reads "Reading Stats. Viewing stats for" and then there are two dropdowns: one has "Genres" selected, and the one underneath has "Economics" selected.
Now they can break down their stats by genre! 😍

In random, fun news, I started a collaborative writing project on Instagram Stories that's been unfolding nicely...
 
Screenshot of an Instagram question box with the prompt: "Once upon a time...". Then there are four responses, and a completed poll at the bottom with the four options securing 48%, 9%, 15%, and 27% respectively.
Screenshot of an Instagram story featuring text. It starts with "Once upon a time..." and then has four sentences afterwards. The first sentence "...words started to disappear from books' pages after they were read." is the winner of the prior picture's poll. Each sentence has an Instagram handle at the end. Then there's a question box at the bottom with the prompt "Part  5 out of 10..."

Next two weeks


Send me all the good luck vibes so that I can get past these upgrades and get back to all the fun, exciting new features I'm working on! 🍀
 

What I'm reading


I'm finally reunited with Robin Hobb and I don't want Ship of Destiny to end! 😭

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. Know somebody who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey? Please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 
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