Tony Poor

Bookshelf is a concept web application that allows avid book enthusiasts to share their collections with others. It sets itself apart by focusing on the story behind the collection. My role in the team revolved around interaction design and user research.

During user research, we noted that most avid book collectors love to talk about the stories behind their books: how they acquired them, why their content is interesting, etc. They identify with their collection not as a group of physical books, but as a set of memories and histories. Existing collection management systems miss the mark when it comes to supporting this. One of the main results from this insight is a timeline, which shows a series of important dates and stories related to an individual book or an entire collection.

In addition to the story-based approach, we put a great deal of effort into collection management (adding, editing, and maintaining books) and social interactions between collectors (for example, Bookshelf finds and suggests collections similar to your own).

While only slightly related, in the future I’d also like to design and develop some kind of companion iPhone app: the idea is that if you were in a library or bookstore, you could take a picture of a book’s barcode and get information on reviews, summaries, and similar books (and, if in a library, could show you info about other nearby libraries that have similar books). It could potentially sync with book-management applications (like Bookshelf), automatically adding the book to your collection or reading list. So look for more on that soon!