2020
Reese's Book Club
BUILDING A DTC COMPLEMENT TO A THRIVING SOCIAL COMMUNITY
iOS & Android App
USER RESEARCH & VALIDATION / ROADMAP & PRODUCT STRATEGY / UX & UI DESIGN / WEB & NATIVE ENGINEERING
2020
01. The Brief
Almost 2 million passionate fans were stuck within the walled gardens of social media.
Our mission was to cultivate a meaningful book club community to celebrate narratives that place women at the center.
02. The Approach
From live streamed Q&As, to donations, to exclusive fan merch, the potential for breadth and depth in the experience was expansive.
We dimensionalized our audience through both direct user research and close collaboration with the team that built Reese's Book Club from the ground up to identify the priority features that would augment the successful social program and shape our MVP experience and year one roadmap.
We focused on developing features that would expand the ways the community can connect with each other and every book. Discussions needed to be flexible, and create opportunities for both casual, light-touch interactions and deeper discussions. The feature set needed to accommodate users with 5-minutes of free time, or an hour of deep focus.
Given the urgency to go-live and need for an efficient build process, we developed a flexible modular system using React Native, allowing our design system to work across responsive websites and iOS and Android devices.
With a passionate fan base and a celebrity-backed launch, we knew the app would gain immediate traction. Working off of a well-planned year-one product roadmap yet staying responsive to community feedback and the app's engagement metrics and performance, we worked hand in hand with our partners at Hello Sunshine to iterate the app over the six months following launch to fine tune the experience.
03. The Output
Reading FTW
The Reese’s Book Club App invites its members to go beyond just the books and empowers our growing community to connect with each other, the stories, and authors, and even Reese herself.
A Cozy Corner of the Internet
The app expands the ways our community can connect with picks, authors and each other. In-app experiences like comments, discussions, polling, and guessing the next RBC pick create a safe and welcoming space for readers to share their passion, whether they have five minutes free or an hour.
Pick Discovery
The app centers around Reese's monthly book picks. Readers can sort, filter, and add books to their reading list. Book pages are editorialized and brought to life with voice-overs from Reese, creating a dedicated space to highlight the author and invite reviews from members of the club.
04. Outcomes
We launched the app in February 2021 and saw a tremendous response from the community, including over 80k+ users within the first week, a feature in Fast Company, and a feature on Good Morning America.
Hello Sunshine acquired by Blackstone-backed media company (later announced to be Candle Media).
Read about it in The Wall Street Journal.