App Bookish

ROLE: LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER
PRODUCT: BOOKISH APP (IOS & ANDROID)
Period: 2024 – 2025

SUMMARY

The Bookish app extends the reading experience beyond the physical format. It lets you discover new reads recommended by experts, organize your digital library (books read, currently reading, to-read, or abandoned), share ratings with the community, make purchases, track your reading progress, and discover partner brick-and-mortar bookstores.

THE CHALLENGE

• Take over a project already started by another team and move it forward quickly.
• Analyze and assess existing screens, flows, and features to iterate on an existing foundation.
• Understand the inherited design system, propose improvements, and adapt it to new requirements.
• Improve the user experience in key flows: walkthrough, personal library, book editing, physical bookstore discovery, and in-app purchase experience.
• Design a content strategy to increase conversion and engagement.
• Balance priorities between business goals, user needs, and technical constraints.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead product design: defining flows, functional structure, and visual experience.
• Make strategic decisions based on weekly data, A/B tests, and qualitative feedback.
• Design and iterate key product screens, prioritizing usability and visual consistency.
• Coordinate handoff with the development team (front-end, QA, and developers).
• Maintain and evolve the design system, ensuring scalability and consistency.
• Collaborate with marketing, tech, and customer service stakeholders to align objectives.
• Facilitate internal workshops to align product vision, roadmaps, and priorities.
• Prototype complex features to validate hypotheses before implementation.

IMPACT

• Increase from 4% to 8% in purchases made through the app after redesigning the purchase flow.
• Improved engagement thanks to the optimization of flows such as price scanning and walkthrough, with a 10% to 12% increase in daily usage.
• Reduced friction in the personal library editing process, improving session duration and the number of completed actions per session.
• Standardization of design patterns and documentation, which increased development speed and reduced implementation errors.

KEY LEARNINGS

• Designing specific features for apps requires understanding their technical limitations and the native patterns of each operating system.
• Good product design starts with a balance between business vision, active listening to the user, and close collaboration with development.
• Defining a rigorous data analysis process (both quantitative and qualitative) allows for informed decision-making and helps avoid unnecessary implementations.
• Prioritizing what not to design is just as important: understanding the real impact of new features before investing resources in their development.
• Reevaluating inherited ideas requires sensitivity and judgment: not everything from the past is wrong, but everything must be justified.