Design Question:

How might we improve people's reading experiences of dense texts?

Ideation

Speaking with our client, we ideated several main functionalities to help visualize what will be required for Noteable. What we discussed includes: onboarding, PDF viewer, note-taking annotation tools, and text summarizer. The client already had their own initial design ideas on the product going into discussion.

The following was their initial concept:

Empathy Map

I made an empathy map to understand what users may say, feeling, think, and want when they are faced with large reading.

Pain Points

Using the empathy map, I then identified a few pain points that users may experience when trying to read dense texts.

Information Architecture

I created an information architecture to visualize Noteable's basic user flows.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Final Features

Annotation | Users can take notes and annotate PDF files

Summarization | Users can generate AI summaries, and edit them as needed

Learnings

From this experience I learned that getting a client's input throughout the design process & repeated iteration on our product is critical to dynamic solution building. Within our design cycles, we continuously spoke with the client to see what they thought of the designs as we progress. I also learned that a client may understand what they want but not necessarily how to move towards their vision. Therefore it was very rewarding as a designer to work continuously with these users to find how diverse solutions can meet their needs.