Kindle Direct Publishing

Project Brief

Design Outcome

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

Find KDP's original website here.

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Research process

Value Proposition Canvas

To learn about the problem space and ensure the product would help solve the user’s problems, we created a Value Proposition Canvas (VP Canvas). The VP Canvas allowed us to map out what we believed the user was looking for and develop a product that would address most of the users’ pain points.

Usability Heuristic Evaluation

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

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.

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Usability Testing

• 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.

Design process

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

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

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

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

KDP Redesign Overview:
Sign in to Publish

Documentation

Wireframes

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Component Library & Style Guide