Case study: Wattpad is good, Could be better!
Understanding the users and their mental model in an attempt to redefine their experience in the community they are been a part of, for years & unleashing the ultimate power of the community.
“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” — Margaret J. Wheatley
Introduction
Wattpad is primarily a free online storytelling community that associates writings from the most diverse locations in the world, allowing people to create and discover great stories to read.
Wattpad Community has 90 million monthly users as per the current stats with over 665 million story uploads in total. 80 percent of users are female, 80 percent of whom are millennials or Gen Z.Exceptional Stories from Wattpad have been published and developed into books by mainstream book publishers, and films have been created by Netflix and Hulu.
GOAL
To research and study the users of the community, their behavior, usage pattern & frameworks. Understanding the interaction flow, the pain points, the wants and needs of the user.
We divided the research process into different phases.
DISCOVER
While searching through different apps and communities for book lovers, we came across various communities on Telegram, Discord, Reddit: eBookRoom, GoodReads, BookHouse, eBooks, GoodReads, BookLovers, r/52books.
No doubt, they were good enough and served the purpose of the users giving them free book resources, some of the best-published novels on the go. You could request the bot and you’d get the book in the blink of an eye.
We felt there was some lack of interaction among users on these platforms. Users got the book, but no one discussed the books & no leverage to choose a book by learning the reviews and ratings.
These are a few insights we drew from each community we landed in.
eBOOKROOM [TELEGRAM]
r/52BOOKS [REDDIT]
GOODREADS [DISCORD]
We didn’t connect with those platforms, which made us dig a little deeper and find something we were looking for.
“Where there is a will, there is a way.” — George Herbert
We now searched for some bigger communities, having a large active user base that offers more than just book exchange. We asked for some recommendations and suggestions from our friends on our Instagram handles and came across this community called Wattpad Community.
The Community is a global community with a huge active user base. We were amazed by the number. We started learning more about the community and what it has to offer its users.
Findings
Seeing how the community works for its users, and the features it has to offer to its writers and readers, We decided to learn more about it but this time in detail and in-depth to understand and know what users have to say about Wattpad and how do they engage with the community. The scope of research here was definitely high.
Wattpad Community Overview
We began exploring the app and went deeper into studying the functionality of the app, how is the interaction, what they look for in the community, how this co-related system of readers and writers work, what are some things that set it apart from other communities, what different features it has to offer to the readers and writers alone.
We came across three types of interactions between the readers and writers.
- the first one via comment section after the chapter ends
- the second one via posting on the writer’s timeline
- the third one via paragraph wise reviewing and commenting
Interactions on different platforms
Here, We didn’t find one-on-one interaction of readers with fellow readers.We then made a detailed structure of the interaction patterns happening in the community to visualize the interactions in the app.
Existing User Research
To proceed with the research process, we jumped straight into the existing user research i.e. the app reviews and Quora.
After all, Who knows what a user wants more than the user himself.
Below are some of the many critical reviews We came across in the ‘Rating and Review’ section.
Google PlayStore Reviews
Quora Reviews
Wattpad is like my own journal but in a different way. I record my thoughts and feelings through different characters. It is also sort of my happy place. I can write and read books that inspire me to keep writing. And above all, it’s free.
— Hayley Tang
As a young author, I was not highly experienced with writing fictional stories. I have had many people read it and give feedback that has not only to help me improve my book but also encouraged me to continue publishing.
— Alexia Dselvia
I think it is a great platform with a helping community. Wattpad supports the writers with features like the Paid Story program and Wattys. It gives exposure to the young writers and acknowledgment to the top writers. But it’s selective.
— Viola Beckham
Wattpad should add a review section or make it easier for readers to find stories that are more towards their tastes. Books are not proofread, so it’s quite difficult to find a book without many grammatical errors.
— Deepa Benny
DEFINE
AIM: From the secondary research that we did, we had a few findings we wanted to know more about, from existing Wattpad members.
1How does the absence of a proofreading feature affect the experience of users?
2How do readers interact with fellow readers of the community?
3How often do you get recommendations based on your previous reads?
4What’s that one deciding factor that makes you pay for a certain story?
We started interacting with the users of the community to know how readers support the writers in their journey and what writers have to offer in return to their readers to form an interdependent system.
Based on our study, we segregated the community members into broad categories like readers, writers, and both. We then reached out to a few of these people with a questionnaire.
We conducted a small survey with 16 Users from the community. The aim was to explore all the cases comprising of both readers and writers and study the common ideologies and the mental model of users, to derive how the existing circumstances can be refined.
- Since how long you have been a part of this community?
- What activities do you do in Wattpad apart from Reading & Writing?
- What makes you pick a certain story?
A few of our key questions helped us dig deeper into the users’ minds and their behavior.
1.How Wattpad helps you interact with fellow readers based on your common interests?
2.Do you feel anything missing or would you like to share anything that could be added or corrected for the community so that it benefits a reader?
3.Would you want Wattpad to include an inbuilt feature for proofreading your work or comments section works fine for you?
4.Which of the Wattpad features/ programs/ opportunities benefitted you the most, as a writer?
5.Given an option, what would you like to change or add to the Wattpad community as a writer and a reader?
Our main understanding being the spectators of the community:
SCENARIO- There are grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in the book, the readers point out the mistakes and let the writer know in the comment section.
WRITERS' POV: There are honest readers who point out my mistakes and help me correct them.
Here, He is satisfied with the readers giving feedback on the comment section.
READERS POV: How annoying is this to find errors and grammatical mistakes while I read my favorite stories. Why do I have to point out the mistakes to the writers? Why can’t they publish a story without any errors?
Here, finding errors while reading ruins a reader’s experience.
USER JOURNEY MAP
Based on the responses from the survey, we came across some common user responses through which we could identify some problem areas. We observed different types of users. Based on these users we created some user personas to ease our understanding of their experience with the community.
Defining the three User Personas as
- A published Writer
- A frequent Reader
- An Irregular Reader
1) A Published Writer
2) A Frequent Reader
3) An irregular reader
CONCLUSION
After going through this research process and studying the framework of users we conclude that “Wattpad is good, Could be Better.”
There is a scope for improvement in certain areas of the Wattpad community which when worked on will make it more convenient for people to interact and attract a larger user base globally.
Our Team developed some personal learnings from the research process:
- Building trust with the people whom we interviewed is the foundation of excellent research.
- One should not have any preconceived notions while conducting the user research.
- People show different attitudes and behavior across different platforms.
- The key is to focus on “what the users do” more than on “what they say”.
Know the Team
Project Duration: 8 Days
Tools used:
