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February 12, 2024

#165 - 2024's Roadmap

The plans for the product this year, the launch of two new types of reading challenges, and a realisation about our upcoming book club feature. 😅

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#165 | 12 February 2024

2024's Roadmap


We've figured out the high-level roadmap for the product this year. It's a year of two halves.

The first half will be focused on finishing off what we started last year — the Community/Social updates, the Plus Advanced Stats transition — and adding a couple big new features — push notifications and a Quotes section.
 
Screenshot of the current Community page showcase a couple news feed updates, a "Friends & Following" section, and a "Similar Users" section.
We'll be revamping this page as part of the Community updates!

The second half will be focused on Performance, Polish, and Design. Think fast page loads everywhere, a slick user interface, and delightful, intuitive user flows.

We also hope to officially launch our Giveaways platform, making it fully self-service. 🤞🏾

Well, that's the plan anyway!

Let's see how we go. 😁
 

Since last time...
 

Finally, the two new types of reading challenges are out! 🙌🏾

Now, instead of only having the option of text-based prompts, you can either set specific books as prompts...
Screenshot of a challenge with the description "The top 5 fiction books from the NYT in 2023". There's a heading "Challenge Books" and then five books laid out in a row of three and then two, each white box with a grey border featuring a book cover, a title, and author.
It's been very cool seeing people use this feature as an author or series tracker!

...or you can just specify how many books of a certain type need to be read for a challenge to be completed.
Screenshot of a page with a question header reading "Which type of reading challenge would you like to create?". Then there are three white panes stacked on top of one another, each with different text. The first box has text reading: "Prompt, e.g. a book translated from Italian." The second box reads: Book: Each prompt is a specific book." The third box reads: "Number, e.g. read 12 Classics". The text for this box is cyan, implying it's been selected or put into focus.

We also did some behind-the-scenes work, in advance of our larger database re-architecture, to make our recommendations setup more performant. We did have some slowdowns and outages due to unforeseen complications...but luckily they didn't last too long. 😅

 
Thank you to everyone who left an App Store or Play Store review off the back of the last issue. I read every single one!! 🥰
 

Next two weeks


So, my original (self-inflicted, naturally) deadline for book clubs was December 31st...then it became January 31st...then it became February 11th...
Screenshot of the new upcoming book club page. Top left is the StoryGraph logo and text to the right of it reads: "Book Club: TSG Team Club. Run by 'nadia'. 3 memebers". Underneath is a tabbed sections. The tab titles read Upcoming meetings, Past meetings, About, and Code of Conduct. The "Upcoming meetings" tab is selected and a white pane is shown, with a calendar icon and text reading "No upcoming meetings. Once a meeting is scheduled it will show up here."
Lil' sneak peek, innit. 👀
 
...but on February 8th, apart from still not finalising the interface and back-end architecture for polls (for choosing books and meeting dates), I realised that our book clubs feature would be massively lacking if we didn't have a group-wide discussion space that was independent of any specific meeting.

And so now each book club needs a forum, à la readalongs, so we're saying end of Feb/early March now. 😅
 

What I'm reading


I'm buddy reading Dune with my sister and then we're gonna watch the first film before the next one comes out!

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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