Social Reading · Community App · 0→1
knovelo.
A reader community app connecting book lovers through shared discovery, highlights, and community reviews — designed from ideation to production-ready mobile experience.
maya_reads
2h
"Not all those who wander are lost — but all those who read are found."
The Fellowship of the Ring
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Share
React
arjun.books
5h
"The first chapter is the promise the book makes to the reader."
On Writing
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Share
React
Trusted by 3 people you follow
The Midnight Library
0→1
Full App Design
15
Screens
12
User Interviews
4
Core Flows
2
Platforms
read
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highlight
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share
·
discover
·
connect
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read
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highlight
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share
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discover
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connect
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01
01 — Problem
Reading is social. Apps treat it as solitary.
Goodreads is the dominant player but it's dated, slow, and focused on cataloguing over community. Book lovers have rich conversations on Twitter and Reddit but there's no dedicated space for discovery, shared highlights, and community-driven recommendations that actually feel like the way readers talk about books.
01 — Discovery
No social discovery
No way to find readers with similar taste. Discovery is either algorithmic or manual search — neither reflects the taste of people you actually trust. An algorithm recommending a book carries a fraction of the weight of a friend's recommendation.
02 — Sharing
No highlight sharing
Readers already screenshot passages to share on social media. There's no native space for this — no way to share meaningful highlights where book lovers congregate. The behaviour exists everywhere except where it belongs.
03 — Recommendations
Algorithmic noise
Generic "users also liked" suggestions that don't account for nuance or trust. Aggregate ratings from strangers collapse the signal — a book loved by five people in your exact taste niche should rank higher than one rated 4.1 by a million people you share nothing with.
04 — UX
Dated, cluttered experience
Goodreads hasn't evolved in years. The interface is cluttered, slow, and built around cataloguing — not community. A generation of readers has grown up expecting the quality of modern social products. The space was wide open.
02
02 — Research
12 interviews. Three truths.
Conducted with avid readers — 3 to 10 books per year — across fiction and non-fiction. Three themes emerged consistently and shaped every core design decision that followed.
Reading as identity
People want their taste to be visible. What you read is an expression of who you are — genre, pace, depth. Your profile should show that, not hide it behind a static shelf of checkboxes.
"My Goodreads shelf doesn't say anything about who I am as a reader."
Discovery through trust
Recommendations from people you know carry far more weight than algorithms. "A friend loved it" beats five stars from strangers — every time, for every reader interviewed. Trust is the missing layer.
"I'd rather read a 3-star review from someone whose taste I respect than fifty 5-star reviews."
Highlights as currency
Readers already screenshot passages to share on social. Highlighting is how they signal depth and appreciation. Making this a first-class action turns it into social glue — the unit of content that creates connection.
"When I share a passage, I'm saying something about myself, not just the book."
03
03 — Design Decisions
Four things that made it different.
01
Architecture
Feed-First Architecture
Home is a social feed of highlights and reviews from people you follow — not a catalogue. Discovery happens through people, not search. The feed is the product, not a secondary feature. This was the most fundamental break from Goodreads: we made social the front door, not a side tab.
1st
Screen users see
02
Interaction
Highlight-Native Interaction
Highlighting a passage is a first-class action — not a buried feature. You can quote a highlight in a review, reshare it to your followers, or react to others' highlights directly. The passage becomes the unit of social currency — small, shareable, and expressive. It costs almost nothing to engage, so engagement compounds.
#1
Engagement driver
03
Identity
Taste Profile
Your profile shows your genre spread, reading speed, favourite authors, and recent highlights — making your taste visible and matchable. Identity is the discovery engine, not just a vanity page. Genre distribution is visualised as a proportional chart so at a glance you can see whether someone reads broadly or deep in a single area.
5+
Taste dimensions
04
Trust
Trust Circles
Follow friends, trusted reviewers, and public figures. Their ratings carry more weight than aggregate scores in your personalised view. Social trust, not crowd consensus, drives what surfaces for you. A book rated 3.8 by your inner circle beats a 4.4 from strangers. The system is explicit about this weighting — you can see the trust-circle score separately.
∞
Trust layers
04
04 — Key Screens
15 screens. One coherent system.
Four core screens carry the full Knovelo experience — each designed around a distinct user job, with mobile-first interaction patterns and a content hierarchy built for scanning.
Onboarding
01 — Entry
Onboarding
Taste quiz — genre picks and reading pace — followed by follow suggestions seeded from your selections. First value in under 3 minutes: a personalised feed before you've added a single book.
Feed
02 — Core
Social Feed
Highlight cards, review cards, and discovery prompts in a single infinite scroll. Each card is optimised for quick reading — author, book, passage, and context at a glance.
Book
03 — Discovery
Book Detail
Community rating from your trust circle plus highlights and reviews from people you follow. The social layer wraps every book — not just popular ones, making the long tail discoverable.
Profile
04 — Identity
Taste Profile
Genre spread visualisation, reading history timeline, and a highlight wall. Your profile becomes a readable expression of your literary identity — discoverable by people who share your taste.
05
05 — Outcome
A reading experience that feels social.
Knovelo went from a blank canvas to a production-ready iOS and Android design — with a complete interaction system, documented component library, and a social reading experience that treats community as the core product, not a feature bolted on top.
0→1
Full mobile app designed from first principles to production-ready — iOS and Android, with a complete component library and interaction system
15
Screens designed across onboarding, feed, discovery, book detail, profile, settings, and social interactions — one coherent visual system
4
Core decisions that differentiate Knovelo from every existing reading app — feed-first, highlight-native, taste profile, and trust circles
buddhpriya93@gmail.com · +91-8840-871-715 · buddh.in