Kindle Direct Publishing

Project brief

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon’s self-publishing platform. Amazon launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for authors and publishers to independently publish their books directly to the Kindle Store. KDP offers the capability of publishing both e-books and paperbacks through the same platform. After doing a pilot research on KDP website, we found fundamental entry barriers in the current UX design that compromise the self-publishing experience. So the team took a comprehensive approach to analyze and improve the user experience of the KDP website.

TimeLine

September - November 2022

Tools

VP Canvas, User testing, Persona, Commutative Analysis, Sitemap, Prototypes (Lo-fi & Hi-fi), Component Library‍

Key features

Categorized and small chunk tasks

Reorganized and redefined categories (progress bar) and subcategories make the submission process less arduous and easy to follow.

All the cover design tools at your fingertips

Get access to all the necessary tools and resources for designing a cover. Edit fonts, colors, cover images and a lot more.

Quick final preview and edit

Go over all the information in no time and make sure that all of it is correct before submitting. The edit feature on top of each category offers a quick findability.

KDP's current website

Click to enlarge

Usability heuristic evaluation

Using Jakob Nielsen’s Heuristics, we evaluated KDP’s website to inspect usability, and identify any design issues and possible solutions.

Heuristic evaluation of Kindle self publishing

Competitive analysis

We did a competitive analysis to get insights into the features, functions, flows, and feelings evoked by the design solutions of KDP’s competitors. By understanding the facets of competitors' products, we planned to design a solution with the goal of making a superior experience.

Kindle publishing page competitive analysis

Usability testing

To back up the finding from our research we planned a moderated usability testing with 4 users. We gave them a set of tasks that are categorized into 4 main sections:

Website findability and sign in
Creating an eBook and filling in details
Using cover creator tools
Saving and finding a draft

We then used affinity diagraming to categorize users’ pain points, feelings, thoughts, wishes, emotion and quotes.

Persona

Based on the research we created a persona to help communicate information about the users.

Customer journey map

The customer journey helped us to evaluate how our persona would move through the website. We saw their potential pain points at each stage and ensured that these were addressed in the solution that we designed.

Reimagine the sitemap

After the comprehensive research we did on the user group and the competitors, we realized a totally new sitemap is necessary for offering a better site's look, functionality, and content offering.

Alter KDP structure & the publishing interface

Challenge 1

Lengthy and unorganized process makes the user frustrated

Proposed Solutions‍

Redefine main categories
Break down categorizes into small bite sub-categories
Give the returning users proper feedback on where they are in the submission process
Improve project page search feature and make it more visible
Use proper icons and colors to show the progress

Challenge 2

KDP's affiliation with Amazon is not delineated for the user

Proposed Solutions‍

Use the feel and look of Amazon’s branding
KDP’s new branding and style guide
Use different touchpoints to Amazon and Amazon Kindle website
Improve sign-in with amazon
Create another touchpoint to Amazon marketplace and Kindle Store right after publishing with KDP

Challenge 3

Users find cover design & book preview interfaces outdated and counterintuitive

Proposed Solutions‍

Follow design standards that matches users mental model (e.g. edit and design apps)
Use tooltips and hover over to introduce different tools
Minimize the number of tools and use overlay for more edit options