More and more young people are reading books on mobile devices, and e-book reading has doubled in recent years. By 2014, the number of mobile reading users in China reached 590 million, and the revenue reached 8.84 billion yuan, an increase of 41.4 percent. It is expected that the size of the mobile reading market will still show a growth rate of more than 20% in 2017, and the revenue will break through 15 billion yuan.
The chart below is from Baidu Index and shows the number of searches for “e-book” from July 2014 to October 2016.
It can also be seen from the data that the e-book market is mainly a group of teenagers. In recent years, wechat’s users have reached all ages, but the main active users are teenagers. The target users of Wechat Reading overlap with the main active users of wechat. Tencent is tapping into the e-book market with wechat’s huge user base and social attributes. The huge user base of wechat and the social nature of wechat reading are the core competitiveness of Wechat reading.
(The experience environment of this article is Meilan Note, operating system is Android 5.1)
Strategic layer:
User portrait of wechat reading: a white collar getting ready to get off/off work on the subway took out his iphone7 and opened the wechat reading APP. Suddenly, he didn’t know what to read. Later, he found his best friend was reading a book named XXX. It wasn’t long before his wechat reading friends saw his notes and commented on them.
Profit model of Wechat reading: Most of wechat reading is charged, but at present, wechat reading does not bring much profit to Tencent. For one thing, Tencent can exchange reading time for reading currency in order to stimulate the enthusiasm of users. Second, users can also give books to their friends so that both of them can have the opportunity to read. Each person can give and receive a limited number of books. Tencent is also encouraging users to share products.
What needs does Wechat Reading meet? Compared with other reading apps, a significant feature of wechat reading is its social nature. Wechat reading not only meets the needs of users to use fragmented time to read books, but also meets the needs of users to “meet friends with books”. Join social contact in reading, maybe you can find one or two like-minded book friends, exchange their reading experience, so that reading is no longer a lonely person, but accompanied by book friends.
The scope of layer:
Reading and socializing are the two functions with the highest demands in wechat reading. It’s called the scope layer.
Structure layer:
Once the product requirements are identified, the organizational structure between the requirements must be determined. The organizational structure of Wechat reading is as follows:
The framework layer:
Just open WeChat reading, is entering “discovered” interface “discovery” with the method of card to the user interface shows the one of last week’s reading champions in their own circles and their reading time, hot list this week, and friends are reading books information, the benefits of the card is very easy to guide users sliding around, let the hot list and friends reading books more exposure, It’s layered and easy to get to the point.” The “Discover” section focuses on social needs, making it easy for users to see what their friends are reading, and if it happens to be a book you like, you’ll have something to talk about with your friends.
Another feature closely related to social attributes is “thoughts”. Here you can comment on your friends’ notes, share your notes and thoughts, and see how others interpret them. Wechat reading puts “discovery” and ideas in the first level of function, so it can be seen that Tencent focuses on the development of social properties of wechat reading, and creates an environment to meet friends through books.
At the first level are “bookshelf” and “ME”. “Bookshelf” is a key point of an e-reading software APP. Although Wechat Reading wants to highlight social functions, it does not forget the importance of “bookshelf” for an e-reading software. In my opinion, “social interaction” and “reading” play an equally important role in wechat reading. Social interaction in wechat reading is based on reading, and reading is different because of social interaction.
The presentation layer:
When reading a book, you can click the left screen to turn to the previous page, and the right screen to turn to the next page. Settings appear in the middle of the screen, and the setting interface is as follows:
Imagine the following scenario: a young man on the subway, with his left hand clutching the handrail and his right hand holding the iphone7, uses his thumb to tap the screen on the right to jump to the next page, but to his annoyance, he often hits the Settings screen. He had to swipe right to turn the page. Why does he always get the wrong page? Because the right hand is holding the phone, the thumb presses down almost in the middle, so the setting screen often appears.
In my opinion, the most frequently used feature is the next page, while the Settings feature is important but not commonly used. So I suggest wechat Reading can do this: click the left third of the screen to turn to the previous page, click the remaining two-thirds to turn to the next page, as for “Settings” can be by clicking the bottom screen and the top screen. In this way, the user who is in the reading state can reduce the error operation and the “Settings” interface, and it is very convenient to operate when the “Settings” is really needed. In “Settings”, you can also adjust the brightness, which I don’t think is necessary, just provide the night mode, because the user’s first thought is to adjust the brightness of the system.
There are too few e-books in the bookstore, which is also a considerable problem. Wechat Reading is essentially an e-reading app, so the number of books in the bookstore directly affects the user’s experience.