: Motivating daily reading by designing flexible reading units
Pie, Digital E-Book Reading App
2023 Academic Project
Best Thesis Award
My role
Brief Context
Final product
Team
Tools
Academic
Advisor
UX Reseach & UX Design
Why do New Year’s resolutions to read more books often fail to stick?
This project takes a motivational design approach to address the friction that prevents people from reading in their everyday lives. By breaking reading into flexible unit sizes and delivering location-based prompts at meaningful moments, it supports small and achievable actions, helping reading feel easier to start and more rewarding to continue.
User Research (60%)
Concept Modelling (70%)
Usability Test (50%)
Branding (40%)
Design System (30%)
Interface Design (70%)
Prototyping (70%)
Animation (100%)
2 UX Designers
Figma, Protopie, After Effect
Soyoung Kyung
I was involved in the entire process, from deriving insights through user research and concept modeling to shaping branding and interface design
Duration
Mar 2023 - Nov 2023
Norwegian Wood
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
An American Marriage
Home isn’t where you land. Home is where you launch. You can’t pick your home any more than you can choose your family.
Life of PI
To choose doubt as a philosophy
of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
9:41
Literature
History
Philosophy
Science
Arts
우주과학
인문
패션
건축공학
요리
It explores modern American marriage, touching on themes of love, betrayal, race, and justice, and was an Oprah's Book Club pick in 2018.
Hmm, let’s see which one seems the most interesting to me today...
I think this is really intriguing!
I’d love to dive into it with a short
collection of readers’ favorite parts
I definitely love it!
I’d like to explore further, maybe
a few chapters or the entire book?
Select Chapter-reading
Select Full-reading
Essays
History
Philosophy
Science
Arts
Travel
Society
IT
Cooking
Sports
Brief Description Popup
About the Book
Users don’t have to leave the page to see what the book is about, which helps them stay in the flow while exploring their options.
Point 2
Direct Link to the Paragraph
in the Book
When people come across an inspiring paragraph, they’re likely to want to learn more. With this feature, they can do so without losing the natural flow of exploring what interests them.
Point 2
Offering a Range of Topics
Overview of the Book
Further Reading Options
Explore Other Books
By offering a variety of topics, people can select books that match their existing interests, while also giving them the opportunity to accidentally discover new ones they hadn’t considered before.
Users can quickly see key information (genre, title, author, description, rankings, and number of saves) to help them decide if the book matches their preferences.
Pressed
By keeping this interest alive, users can be encouraged to naturally keep exploring selected chapters or even immerse themselves in the entire book.
If the content wasn’t particularly engaging, users can quickly return and explore other books in short bursts.
Point 1
Point 1
Point 2
Point 1
5,389
Estimated time of reading 3m
Estimated time of reading 10m
Estimated time of reading 20m or more
Chapter / Full-reading
Step 3
Estimated reading time: 5 min
Choose the chapters
you would like to read
Select All
9:41
The Courage To Be Disliked
Read Now
Save
2 Chapters Selected
001~
First Night: Denying Trauma
Saved 10.9k
051~
Second Night: All Problems ...
Saved 2.6k
101~
Third Night: Discarding the De...
Saved 4.2k
143~
Fourth Night: Living in the Pre...
Saved 8k
187~
Fifth Night: The Courage to Be...
Saved 6.7k
The Courage To Be Disliked
by. Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
9:41
sub strategy
Using the data, I identify their top three areas of interest and send daily highlight sentences randomly via notifications. This creates a seamless way to deliver engaging content while naturally driving app engagement.
Designing a system to accurately detect public transport boarding using GPS and Seoul City API, and send timely notifications immediately after boarding by monitoring location and movement patterns
Flow Logic for a Real-Time Notification System to Detect Public Transport Boarding Status via GPS
Notification UI on a smartwatch
Notification UI on a mobile phone
Smart GPS-Based Notifications for Optimizing Commute Time
The most common pockets of free time are during travel, especially when commuting on public transportation to school or work. It's a great opportunity to establish a routine since users can use that time for simple activities like reading while they're on a bus or subway. To make the most of travel time, I came up with a system that sends an alarm right after boarding, based on the GPS location change rate, allowing users to engage in activities throughout their journey
Tuesday,October 29
8:30
Tuesday,October 29
5:50
Good Morning, Ellie!
now
Check out Today’s reading list and read
just within 10 min if you are going to work!
Good Evening, Ellie!
now
Check out Today’s reading list and read
just within 10 min if you are going home!
The unconscious mind isn't a passive reservoir; it's an active force shaping our thoughts, actions, and even the way we see the world.
May 15
May 15
As AI learns from us, it’s not just replicating human behavior—it’s shaping what it means to be human.
May 15
Essays
Open App
Science
Technology
How might we split a long journey to complete a book
by offering different reading unit sizes and provide readers
with a more sustainable reading habit?
Main strategy
Breaking down a book into partial units
I’ve broken the book into smaller units, allowing readers to start with an intriguing sentence before moving on to a 10-minute paragraph. If they’re hooked, they can delve into chapters or the full version. This approach caters to varying attention spans, making it easy to read in short bursts or dive deeper when time permits, all while maintaining curiosity and engagement throughout.
Sentence
Paragraph
New Partial Units
Full
Original Unit
Chapter
UX Flow Diagram
Segmented Reading Units
Sentence-reading
Paragraph-reading
Step 1
Step 2
Takeaway
I This project made me realize that sustained motivation is not just about adding incentives like rewards or badges. Instead, it pushed me to explore more seamless forms of engagement—by paying attention to specific, in-between moments in users’ daily routines and thinking about how system flows could make better use of those brief moments. By rethinking familiar formats and embedding them into everyday routines, I came to see how motivation can emerge more naturally as users gradually deepen their understanding over time.
