Kindle: Collaborative Reading
For this final written assignment, I have been tasked with designing a new product feature for Kindle/Audible that can serve as a solution to existing pain points for their users. Much like the Strava PM take home project I did, I have to complete an end to end slide deck describing my user groups, create mockups for my solution, and evaluate the effectiveness of it.
This project was extremely interesting for me to investigate as I myself is a regular Kindle user, so I was able to use myself as a reference for potential pain points to tackle.
My teammate and I created a collaborative reading feature, which is designed to transform the reading experience from an individual activity into a shared, interactive journey. By enabling users to connect books to groups, share highlights, add comments, and track collective progress, the feature fosters meaningful connections among readers, whether they’re students, book club members, or friends and family.
This project is a fictitious scenario, completed as a part of CMU BTG's Product Management Academy.
01. Current Journey
What is the current user journey on a Kindle?
02. Empathize
What are the pain points current users face? Who is the target audience for our solution?
1. Students (reading for academic purposes)
Why They Matter: Students rely on books as a primary resource for learning, critical thinking, and research. They represent a significant audience that values efficient, accessible tools for engaging with their academic material. Supporting this group strengthens Kindle’s position as an essential tool for education.
2. Book club members (reading recreationally)
Why They Matter: Book club members are passionate readers who seek meaningful engagement with books and enjoy discussing them with others. They represent a socially active demographic, often influencing others’ reading habits and driving demand for high-quality book formats and tools.
3. Leisure readers (individual, personal reading)
Why They Matter: Leisure readers form the largest audience segment for books, reading for relaxation, entertainment, and personal growth. Their consistent engagement with books makes them a core audience, driving Kindle’s overall adoption and market presence.
My chosen user group: Students (reading for academic purposes)
We believe this segment will benefit the most from a structured yet collaborative approach to reading, which can enhance their learning experience and foster more effective engagement with academic materials.
03. Solution
What problem am I solving? What does the design entail?
The solution introduces a collaborative reading feature for Kindle, allowing users to connect books to groups for shared reading experiences. Through this feature, users can view and share highlights, add comments and tags to specific passages, and track group reading progress. A centralized Linked Books Page serves as the hub for managing and organizing group-enabled books, making it easy for users to participate in meaningful discussions and deepen their engagement with the material.
The user can access the group page through the dropdown menu on the Kindle’s main page. Here, you can join, create, or view existing groups. On a group page, you'll see all linked books.
The user can view highlights and comments for books you don’t own, but interaction is limited to liking and commenting on existing content. To purchase a book, use the "Add to Library" prompt to visit the Kindle Store. You can also link new books directly from this page.
Users can toggle on collaborative reading mode through the book menu when they open a book. The collaborative mode will only be accessible to books linked to a group.
While reading, in addition to the dotted lines indicating global popular highlights, group-specific highlights are displayed in a lighter gray with an indicator showing who highlighted the passage. A marker also shows the reading progress of other group members.
When highlighting a quote, a new "Group" button allows you to select a group to share the highlight with. You can then add a comment to the quote and assign a topic tag for better organization.
Group highlights are saved in a "Group Clippings" book, accessible from the main Kindle page. This follows the same format as the "My Clippings" book for personal highlights.Within the Group Clippings book, you can:View all group quotes.Filter quotes by book, chapter, or topic tags.Like and comment on your group members’ highlights, fostering further engagement.
Since Kindle already incorporates built-in online features, such as Goodreads integration and Safari browsing capabilities, the foundation for this feature is largely in place. Engineers can leverage the existing Goodreads user flow for sharing quotes into groups, reducing the need to develop this functionality from scratch.
The primary development efforts will focus on building the Group Pages and the Group Clippings Book Page. Additionally, engineers will need to implement functionality to filter and tag items within the Group Clippings Book for better organization and usability.
04. Evaluation
What are the business impact and product improvements with the new feature?
- Group Collaboration: More students are willing to keep using Kindle for projects with the added collaboration aspect
- Future Collaborations: Marketing directly to schools/ universities with subscription deals to encourage student use -> user growth & recurring revenue
- User growth: Students invite their teammates to use Kindle for collaboration
- Revenue growth: The feature is only available for books purchased through Kindle store -> incentives more kindle store purchases
- Group usage: % of users creating or joining a group
- Repeat usage: % of users who continue using the group reading feature after 60 days
- Active groups: % of active groups after 30 days (at least 1 member opening the book in group mode or content interaction)
- Time spent: Average time spent reading a book in group mode per user
- Quotes saved: Average # of quotes saved / notes / comments per group user
- Books linked: % of users linking books to groups
- Book purchases: The % increase in Kindle book purchases for group reading (i.e., purchase a book -> link it to group)
- Notifications for group activity allow groups to set goals
- Premium group features (e.g., visualizing group contributions)
- Kindle unlimited feature
- Partner with schools / universities to introduce this to students
- Provide onboarding instructions and tutorials
It is important to introduce the company's higher level goals to tell the story of why you chose your particular user segment. It shows that you have done research both into the company and the users, but that you understand the deeper purpose of your product.
While we were not required to do so by the PMA team, the judges said to consider timeline and feasibility while creating our products.
This feedback prompted us to think critically about how our ideas could be implemented realistically within the constraints of existing resources and infrastructure. Luckily, our product was very feasble as the design was inspired by the existing features that the Kindle already had.
Considering this will highlight the importance of balancing innovation with implementation challenges in product management.
The judges emphasized that conducting interviews with real users is more impactful than dedicating excessive time to perfecting Figma mockups.
Engaging in user research and gathering real-world insights demonstrates attention to detail and the ability to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It reflects a deeper level of commitment to understanding user needs and showcases a unique skill in translating those insights into actionable solutions, setting you apart from other PM applicants.