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June 3, 2024

#173 - When Users Show The Way...

Two cases where user polling lead to new ideas, some performance improvements, and getting ready for new infrastructure.

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#173 | 3 June 2024

When Users Show The Way


Checking in with your users on, seemingly, minor decisions can be so illuminating! There've been two such cases in the last week.

We recently decided to move the ability to filter book lists by format higher up the priority stack.

For stats, we group 'paperback' and 'hardcover' together under 'print', but I wasn't sure if, on the whole, the people who cared for the format filter also needed to distinguish between the type of print book when browsing.

So, I went to Instagram to poll our followers. Normally, there's a clear answer either way...
 
Screenshot showing a poll from Instagram hosted by @the.storygraph. There are two options: "Print, Digital, Audio", and "Paperback, Hardcover, Digital, Audio". Both grey bars are half filled with black and there are two red circles around pieces of text. The first red circle highlights "6512 responses". The second red circle shows that the vote was split 51% to 49%.
Not super conclusive...

However, in the meantime, rehabofabookworm posted the following comment: 
"Maybe when you select print it then opens up the options of paperback and hardback?" The comment has 812 likes and 39 replies.

And suddenly a new path that satisfied everybody became clear! 🤩

Then, a few days later, I wanted to let people know how we were thinking about an upcoming highly anticipated feature:
Caption reading: "For our upcoming monthly shareable graphics, we’re thinking of two formats: One that’s pretty much the same template as our annual one (see picture) and another that’s a calendar view.  What do you think?  What do you want to see in the calendar view?  Do you have any ideas for any other monthly wrap-ups/graphics?  P.S. Don’t forget that you can get your 2021, 2022, and 2023 SG Wrap-Ups now from the relevant stats pages, even if you only joined today! ✨"

And as much as we had loads of people saying they loved the idea of having a monthly version of our annual template, we had a handful of people saying: "Can we have something different for the monthly template? I don't want the excitement/novelty of the annual template to wear off!"

And that really resonated with me...

I think they may be right! 😌
 

Since last time...
 

The sort and filtering functionality of the Public Buddy Reads page is now on par with the Readalongs one:
 
Screenshot of the bottom of the buddy reads filter menu showing page number checkboxes, and options for the To-Read Pile, standalone books, read books, owned books, and "buddy reads with friends". Then there's an expanded sort menu, with options for date created, end date, participants, and activity level.

And we made great progress with the speed of book pages and the Community page! While sometimes the content for the Community Reviews and Similar Users panes may take a few seconds to show up, the initial page loads will always be fast! 😎

If you find this not to be the case, let me know!
 

Next two weeks


I hope that the app is ready for our transition to distributed database architecture and that I've finished the piece of Librarian tooling that I've been developing on and off over the last few weeks.

We're currently a month delayed on the 2024 roadmap for the product and I don't want to get too much further behind! 😅
 

What I'm reading


I'm now only a day behind my tough reading schedule for my Women's Prize Shortlist Reading Challenge. Today I've got to finish off River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure and read a third of V. V. Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night. 3.4 books to finish in ten days. I can do it! 💪🏾
The image shows details about the book "River East, River West" by Aube Rey Lescure. It's a 320 page fiction book being published in 2024. Tags describe it as historical, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced and up-next. The reading progress bar shows it is 62% finished as of May 31, 2024.

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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