How do you improve book/pdf/article reading experience on Chrome in mobile or tablet?

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How do you improve book/pdf/article reading experience on Chrome in mobile or tablet?

Asked at Google over a year ago

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Product Improvement category

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Nisha Gupta · Answer 1 · 2020-07-17T13:03:31+0000

Clarifying questions:

Objective of improvement? Increase Engagement

Is the improvement target toward specific user segment? No. Make your assumption

Objective: To increase user engagement by improving reading experience on chrome in mobile and tablet

User Groups:

We can categorize user based on their age groups

Kids (Age 8-18) – Whose usage of devices have increased due to virtual learning.

Adults (Age 21-40) – Who use chrome for reading news, research papers, articles, books

Aged (Age 50+) – Who use chrome mostly for lite reading like news

Let us focus on Adult user group as they are the most active users and large in number

Use Cases:

1. Ad-supported sites: There are no website without showing ads. Ads are everywhere. A random click could take users on ad sites which could be frustrating. Users also see ads suggestions which are unnecessary and could be very distracting. This also slows down the site if you have a bad connection

2. Distracted by notifications: User is distracted by notifications or pop-ups while reading

3. Making Notes: To make notes from certain site or article, the user copies the content and switches to other note keeping apps to save their content for future reference

4. Progress on Page: User doesn’t know its progress on the article it has read when it comes back to it later

5. Visiting closed tabs: User goes to more option, clicks on recent tab to access recent closed tabs

6. Bookmark: User goes to more option, clicks on star, the goes to Bookmarks to access the bookmarked sites

7. No Suggestions: User gets no suggestion/recommendation of what to read next after reading an article

8. Changing font and font size: User should have an option to change font and size of the page. User pinches out the screen to make the font bigger which makes him drag left to right to read the entire sentence

Prioritizing Use cases

S#	Use case	Importance to User	Impact on engagement	Comments
1	Ad-supported sites	10	10	Users would love to read on ad-less pages which would load faster and show no irrelevant ads
2	Distracted by notifications	8	9	User can lose focus by simplest of notifications due to the various apps in his device. On improvement user would be able to read longer and focus better
3	Making Notes	7	8	User has to either take screen shot or manually save the quotes or content in note taking app. On improvement user can save the content with ease and can refer it later
4	Progress on page	5	5	User can lose track of its progress (due to refresh). The improvement will make it easy for user to track down their progress on the article/page
5	Visiting previous search pages	7	8	The workflow steps can be optimized
6	Bookmark	7	8	The workflow steps can be optimized
7	No Suggestions	7	8	Suggestions could help users to go to page that other users usually read after the current page
8	Changing font and font size	5	6	User would enjoy changing to his favorite fonts

Let us prioritize Use case: 1,2,3,5,6,7

Solutions

S#	Use Case	Solution	Impact on User	Implementation Costs	Effort
1	Block Ads	Premium service to show no ads on pages User can pay an amount like YouTube Premium to avoid seeing ads on pages	High	Medium	Medium
2	Block Notifications	Block notification on double-tap on the screen On double tapping the content will occupy the entire screen. User will not see or receive any notifications till it double taps again User can select the only important notification that it wants to get while reading	High	Medium	Medium
3	Save Notes	“Notes” tab similar to “Bookmark” tab When user selects a sentence by long press, it will get an option “save on notes” along with save, copy, select all When user goes to more options it can see “Notes” where all the selected notes are saved along with the URL	Medium	Low	Low
4	Recent Tabs	User can swipe left from right end of the screen to get the list of previously closed tabs	Medium	Low	Low
5	Bookmarks	User can swipe right from left end of the screen to get the list of bookmarked sites	Medium	Low	Low
6	Suggestions	Google can suggest what sites to visit next after reading the current article based on the browsing habits of peers Users can swipe up to see suggested sites	Medium	Medium	Medium
7	Suggestions	Trending words can be highlighted on the page so user can click on it and have a quick look on list of news related to it For eg: Google’s new investment gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of $58 billion — the same valuation implied by Facebook. Jio Platforms is highlighted because it is trending.	High	Medium	Medium

1,2,7 can be prioritized

Success metrics

S#	Use Case	Metrics
1	No Ads Premium Service	#users subscribing to Premium #recurring subscribers #sites visited by users in premium
2	Block Notifications	#times user used the feature in a day #of articles user read atleast 90% with the feature on Average reading time on chrome
7	Suggestions: trending words	(#time user clicked on trending word in a day)/(#sites user read in a day)

Summary

Blocking ads could be huge trade off for Google as around 87% of Google’s revenues comes from ads. YouTube has only 1.1% premium users. Similarly, Google might also not have large number of premium users, but they can still provide the best experience to avid readers if they chose to buy premium service. Google also make little changes like optimizing bookmarks and recent tabs and introducing saved notes so user can organize their search histories better. Google can also put its AI to use on sites, so its easy for user to follow trending contents.