Data Display: Storygraph Redesign
exploring creative data display within an existing mobile app
The Premise
Client: Storygraph is a website + app for readers to find and log books.
One service they offer is a stats page with a wealth of information about the books a user has saved.
Goals: I sought to redesign a portion of this page in a fun, creative way that would also condense some of the data for less scrolling.
The Process
I began with some visual research into data display. It’s important for the data to be easy to read and interpret, so I knew I couldn’t deviate too far from established norms. However, I found many examples of unique visual styles as applied to data display, from which I made a moodboard.
Per usual, I did some whiteboard sketches to brainstorm wireframes. I translated these sketches to two low-fi design options. Feedback from peers favored the shelf option.
Most data display is clean and modern-looking, which makes sense when you have complex ideas to convey.
In this case, I was focused on just a few statistics for one user account at a time, and I had room to buck some trends.
I thought it would be fun to experiment with a very physical, material aesthetic, so I decided to hand-paint my main graphic on very textured paper (a used packing envelope).
Through a combination of Photoshop and Figma, I mocked up a prototype showing how the shelf graphic would change to reflect different statistics.
The Product
The final prototype consists of five screens: an uncolored default/no data main display, three variations of different statistics on the display, and a detail page showing the actual books included in a given dataset.
This design minimizes scrolling by allowing the user to switch from statistic to statistic via dropdown menus and utilizing the same graphic to display different statistics.
The art offers a handcrafted charm not often applied to mobile design in general nor data display in particular.
My main takeaway from this project, however, was an understanding of why cutesy handcrafted graphics are not commonly used in app design: it would have taken a great deal of fine-tuning and a lot of image variations to implement this visual style across the whole mobile app.
I was able to create something fun and beautiful because the scope was very small, but I would not attempt a similar approach for a larger project.