BookHero: Connecting Discovery, Borrowing, and Contribution

The challenge: make existing resources easier to use

Anhui Jianzhu University invests in its library collection, yet some books remain overlooked. I approached this as a service problem: students need to discover relevant resources, locate them physically, and have a practical way to suggest what the collection should include.

How might we connect book discovery, borrowing, and contribution in one continuous experience?

The initial concern was about underused books and resource investment. The research shifted the design focus toward the relationship between a collection and its users: a book can be available in the catalog yet still be difficult to discover, retrieve, or discuss. That framing led me to examine the whole service journey before deciding which screens to redesign.

Project framing showing overlooked books within the library's resource investment — The starting point: the gap between building a collection and helping people use it.

Research: connect the institution to everyday use

I combined interviews with library staff and student users, historical borrowing data, and a map of existing digital touchpoints. These methods brought institutional processes and student behavior into the same inquiry.

The methods answered different questions. Staff interviews helped explain how resources enter the collection and how recommendations are handled. Student accounts and questionnaires informed the needs represented in the personas. Borrowing data helped frame the utilization problem, while system mapping exposed the connections a user had to make between services.

BookHero research approach combining interviews, borrowing data, and system analysis — Parallel inquiry into the library system and students' participation.

Three findings guided the proposal:

Fragmented access. The ChaoXing app and the library website offered overlapping but disconnected functions, making physical-book discovery and retrieval cumbersome.
A difficult contribution path. Resource recommendations required an office visit or navigation through the website.
A utilization question. Historical data for the top 200 student borrowers suggested declining borrowing activity, motivating closer examination of discovery and access.

Map comparing the functions and disconnections of the ChaoXing app and library website — The existing ecosystem: students had to bridge the gaps between services themselves.

Borrowing evidence

The chart compares the 2017 top-200 borrower distribution with historical averages for this group. It helps frame a utilization question; it does not represent all students or establish the cause of the decline.

Historical borrowing chart for top-200 student borrowers, including the 2017 distribution

Synthesis: three needs, one service journey

I synthesized three student personas to organize the different priorities found in the research. They are design lenses for the proposal, rather than a statistical segmentation of the whole university.

Three student perspectives
Perspective	Lukas — the planner	Jane — the efficiency seeker	Bruno — the contributor
Persona	Open original ↗	Open original ↗	Open original ↗
Core need	Organize reading over time.	Move quickly from search to shelf.	Share discoveries and opinions.
Design response	Collections and clear availability.	Location guidance and borrowing control.	Reviews, sharing, and resource recommendations.

The current journey exposed three recurring gaps: information lag, difficulty finding the physical book, and limited ways to share or contribute. These became the three design opportunities.

Teacher perspectives were not available in the persona research, so the subsequent journey and interface work focuses on students. Keeping that boundary explicit was important: the library serves a wider community than the group represented in this proposal.

Current-state journey map connecting student actions, touchpoints, and pain points — The current journey: where information, location, and participation break down.

Forming the concept: unification and co-construction

I translated the findings into two linked design principles. Unification connects information and actions that were spread across the existing app and website. Co-construction gives students a visible route to contribute recommendations and opinions, connecting personal reading to the shared collection.

The personas helped connect each principle to a concrete use case. Lukas needs to return to a planned reading list; Jane needs to find a specific book with little logistical effort; Bruno needs a way to turn an individual discovery into something useful for others. These perspectives informed the organization of functions and the three solution areas below.

The proposal therefore links efficient access with participation. Search and loan management support an immediate task, while collections, reviews, and recommendations support a longer relationship with the library.

Lukas planning reading with library information and notifications — Lukas: discover and plan.

Jane using a map to locate a library book — Jane: move from search to shelf.

Bruno sharing an opinion about a book — Bruno: contribute and share.

Architecture: four connected modules

I organized the mobile proposal into Search, Collects, Borrow, and My. The website follows the same service logic so that users encounter familiar information and actions across devices.

This is a proposed experience architecture. Actual interoperability would require integration with the library’s inventory and account systems.

Each module has a clear purpose. Search supports discovery and assessment; Collects supports reading plans; Borrow keeps active loans and return dates visible; My brings personal activity into one place. Connections between these modules let a discovery become a collection item, a borrowed book, or a contribution.

BookHero mobile function architecture with Search, Collects, Borrow, and My modules — The mobile structure connects discovery with planning and borrowing.

Web architecture

BookHero website information architecture — The web proposal extends the same service logic to desktop use.

Design: turn each gap into a clear next action

1. From information lag to informed discovery

Bring availability, book details, ratings, and useful actions together. Collections support reading plans, while interest-based arrival notifications help users discover relevant additions.

The proposed flow moves from a keyword or notification to a book detail, then to saving, locating, or sharing. The design decision is to place these next actions close to the information needed to choose between them. This supports both an immediate search and a reading plan that unfolds over time.

BookHero discovery screens with book information, collections, and notifications — Discover a resource, assess it, and decide what to do next.

2. From search results to the physical shelf

Connect the selected book to a library location and shelf. A consolidated borrowing view makes upcoming returns and current loans easier to inspect.

For Jane’s search-to-shelf journey, the location view makes the transition from an online result to a physical task explicit. After borrowing, the focus changes: loan status and return dates become the important information. The app and web views support that change of task without requiring a different conceptual model.

Search result linked to a book location map — Bridge the digital search and the physical visit.

Borrowing status views on the BookHero app and website — Keep loan status visible across devices.

3. From individual discovery to shared resources

Integrate reviews, sharing, and resource recommendations into the reading journey. The intention is to make contribution an accessible part of everyday library use.

These features address different forms of participation. A review helps other readers assess an existing book; sharing makes a discovery visible; a recommendation communicates a gap in the collection to the library. Their value depends on both a usable interface and an institutional process that receives and responds to contributions.

BookHero interfaces for reviews, sharing, and resource contribution — Participation becomes part of the service journey.

Proposed outcome and next steps

The outcome is a mobile and web service proposal linking the three priorities: discovery, acquisition, and contribution. The future-state journey below shows how those connections are intended to work.

Proposed future-state journey through BookHero's connected touchpoints — The proposed journey is a design scenario, rather than evidence of measured improvement.

One storyboard follows a book through the social journey: Bruno shares it, Lukas evaluates and borrows it, and Jane uses a review and the location guidance to find it. The scenario brings the personas back together and checks how the separate functions contribute to one shared resource.

This project strengthened my ability to translate a broad institutional problem into specific interface and service decisions. Its main limitation is the gap between a coherent proposal and a functioning service.

The next step would be to test search-to-shelf tasks and resource recommendations with students and staff, then assess the feasibility of inventory updates, location data, and contribution handling. Those checks would establish whether the proposed connections improve use in practice.