2026
Dogeared
Dogeared is a mobile reading companion that lets reading groups share reactions chapter by chapter, without spoiling each other's experience.
Role
UX and Product Designer
Team
4 designers
Timeline
March - June 2026
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Problem
There isn't a tool for reading groups that allows for shared reactions
What I designed
A reading companion where reactions unlock chapter by chapter, with quote scanning for physical books.
Result
100% task completion across six sessions, and a redesigned club page that puts reacting first.
What I Did
I was responsible for conducting user interviews, synthesizing design requirements from research, creating a comprehensive design system, and designing wireframes and prototypes from low to high fidelity based on testing results.
Problem
There isn't a tool for sharing reactions to a book while you're reading it
Reading can be an emotionally rich experience, but tends to be done independently. Traditional book clubs solve for the social side, but only if everyone can read on the same schedule and meet at the same time. We wanted to bridge the gap between reading alone and with a book club by creating an asynchronous version of the same shared experience, where friends can read the same book at their own pace and still feel like they're in it together.
What current tools provide
Readers already have tools for tracking books and discussing them once they've finished. What's harder to find is anything for the middle: reacting to a specific moment while reading, alongside people on the same book at a different pace, without giving anything away. The closest tools solve only pieces of this. None handle a small, private group reading at different speeds and leaving reactions tied to a specific place in the text.
Research and Discovery
We researched to understand social reading habits
We interviewed eight readers across different reading habits and group styles, then synthesized requirements through affinity mapping and a synthesis document that paired each insight with a "How might we" question and a design opportunity. These three themes ended up driving the design:
Spoiler Control
Several participants stated spoilers were a major disruption to their reading experience and described holding back from social media and forums until they were done with a book.
Progress Visibility
Some readers reported that seeing a group's reading progress would motivate them to read and keep up with the group, while others said it would make them feel pressured or stressed.
Physical Format Preferences
Nearly every reader preferred physical books over e-readers or online formats.
Plot Twist
Our findings killed our e-reader concept, so we replaced it with something smaller and more useful
Our original concept was built around an e-reader: read the book inside Dogeared, react as you go in a shared margin. Research made that plan hard to defend. Most participants read physical books with no interest in switching formats, and securing publishing rights for in-app text was never realistic for a student project.
With this key finding in mind, we shifted our focus to answer the question: How might we maintain the same context and emotional salience of inline reactions, without requiring users to switch reading formats?
We initially drew inspiration from Kindle's note feature, where the user can highlight and annotate within the book.
A shared margin space for friends
I designed a feature that allows users to either scan and extract text with a camera, or manually enter a quote with a page or chapter number. This is where we started seeing Dogeared as a parallel experience to reading instead of an e-reader.
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Solution
Three tensions, three mechanics
Each research tension mapped to one mechanic in the product. Together they are what makes Dogeared a companion rather than another club app.
Progress gating as spoiler prevention
Readers see the reactions for the chapter they are currently on. Reactions left ahead of their place stay locked, and can be bypassed manually if they choose to.
Showing progress without a leaderboard
Instead of a leaderboard, which introduces pressure and competition, we used a mountain as a metaphor for the stages of a story. Readers can view their group's progress for motivation, or hide it if it introduces negative pressure.
Supporting Physical Formats
Scanning bridges the gap for readers who never wanted to switch formats. Point the camera at a page, trim the selection, and the quote comes back with its chapter and page number attached.
Testing Outcomes and Iteration
Usability testing
We conducted 6 sessions of task-based usability testing across our main flows: onboarding, posting a reaction, updating reading progress, and navigating to the group progress page. After each task, we asked the users on a scale from 1-5 their satisfaction with the time taken to complete a task, ease of use, and the feedback or support provided.
100%
Task Completion Rate
4.7/5.0
Average After Scenario Questionnaire score
Testing wins and positive feedback
Two flows (onboarding and joining a club) were validated out right and didn't require any major changes after usability testing. Participants also described the mountain visualization as low-pressure, but motivating.
Despite the observed friction when adding a reaction, participants responded positively to the quote scanning feature and found the reaction timeline easy to understand.
Redesigning the club page
The club page carried the app's two most important actions: posting a reaction and updating progress. Testing showed both were struggling for the same reason. Five of six participants backtracked or hesitated finding where to add a reaction, and when asked to update their reading progress, participants confused that action with simply viewing the group's progress. Both problems traced back to the same page trying to prioritize too much at once. Testing confirmed the direction for updating progress, but posting a reaction still needed one more pass to become truly immediate.
V1: Pre-testing
Reactions sat below group progress, and updating your own progress competed visually with viewing the groups.
Clarifying language and purpose
The homepage listed books under "Current Reads," language that reads as personal library, not book club activity. Participants weren't sure whether a book shown there belonged to them individually or to a group they were reading with. Renaming the section to "Reading with your clubs" removes that ambiguity: the label itself now tells you these are active club reads, not a personal shelf.
Reflection
Trusting research and knowing when to push past it
The clearest lesson from this project came early on after realizing that our initial concept wasn't going to work out. Our research told us that many prefer to read physical books, and we couldn't realistically depend on gathering publishing rights in the future. Letting go of that direction meant trusting what our interviews indicated over what would have been simpler to design and build. Having to do this early shaped how I weighed my own instincts for the rest of the project.
While redesigning the Club page, the same instinct was tested from the other direction. Testing validated V2's tabs, which cleared up the confusion between updating and viewing progress, but they also put the reaction action one tab away. I wasn't satisfied with that tradeoff for the app's most important action, so V3 made reactions the default view and surfaced the React button immediately. That was a judgement call rather than a validated finding. I believe it was the right one, but hasn't been tested.
Future opportunities
With more time, I would have conducted another round of usability testing, particularly for the changes made in V3. I'd also lean harder on some quanitative metrics next time, since we mostly relied on ASQ scores and qualitative impressions. These told us where the confusion was happening, but not how much it mattered or why. A clearer sense of task time or error rate alongside the satisfaction scores would have made calls like V3 easier to defend with evidence.