DubsBooks: Reimagining the Textbook Purchase Process

The Key Insight

Students at the University of Washington weren't frustrated with the bookstore. They were frustrated with everything around it. Details about which textbooks to get were spread across Canvas, MyPlan, course websites, and instructor slides. No single tool unified the journey from course registration to textbook acquisition. Students consistently delayed purchasing until the first week of classes, not because they were disorganized, but because the ecosystem gave them no reason to act sooner.

This insight redirected our entire project. What began as "improve the bookstore's ordering process" became a design challenge about bridging fragmented systems, ultimately producing DubsBooks, a textbook portal that connects students' course registrations directly to their required materials.

My Role

On a five-person team, I served as UX Research Lead and Sponsor Coordinator. The table below maps what I specifically owned versus what was shared across the team.

Area	My contribution
Research design	Scoped the contextual inquiry protocol. Designed the intercept interview guide and co-designed the survey instrument.
Sponsor coordination	Primary point of contact with bookstore leadership (CEO, COO, Chief of Campus Operations) across both quarters. Coordinated all site visits and stakeholder interviews.
Synthesis	Led the affinity mapping sessions that turned field notes into the four research themes. Drove the connection between contextual inquiry observations and survey data.
Field research	Participated in contextual inquiry (2+ hours of shadowing), helped facilitate intercept interviews with 21 students during spring quarter peak hours.
Design	Contributed to speed sketching sprint, service blueprint mapping, and usability testing. Design execution was led by Karneet Kaur (Lead UX Designer) and Bel Tee-Graziose (UX Designer).

Context

The University Book Store is a student-led, non-profit organization established in 1900, committed to supporting students throughout their academic journey. In 2025, they approached our HCDE capstone team to modernize their textbook ordering experience. The bookstore was simultaneously undergoing renovations: a redesign of the store's physical layout and upgrades to the front-end and back-end of their website.

Our original design question was broad:

By the end of our research phase, we had narrowed this considerably:

Research

We used four methods over two quarters to build a well-rounded view of the bookstore ecosystem. We started with contextual inquiry to observe operations firsthand, then broadened with surveys and stakeholder interviews, and returned to the field with intercept interviews at the start of spring quarter.

Method	Scope	Format
Contextual Inquiry	5 observers, 16 hrs	Shadowing employees and observing customer behaviors on-location, 2+ hrs per observer
User Surveys	n = 25	Textbook buying behaviors and preferences, ~5 min to complete, distributed via mailing lists and bookstore social pages
Stakeholder Interviews	n = 4	Understanding sponsor needs, limitations, and capabilities with CEO, COO, Chief of Campus Operations, and eCom Data Specialist; ~30–45 min each
Intercept Interviews	n = 21	Quick surveys with students at the time of purchase during spring quarter peak hours, ~5–10 min each

Contextual inquiry

The beginning of winter quarter gave us a unique opportunity to observe bookstore operations during their busiest period. With permission from staff, we shadowed employees from pre-opening through peak hours as they fulfilled orders. I scoped the observation protocol; all five team members participated as observers. We documented interactions through field notes and analyzed them via affinity mapping.

This method surfaced operational realities that no survey could reach:

• ~250 online orders in the Day 1 morning backlog
• ~15 min lag time for inventory updates
• Timing mismatches: students arrived before their pickup orders were ready
• Information gaps: students sometimes asked for books that professors hadn't notified the bookstore about

User surveys

We surveyed UW students over two weeks through mailing lists and social media posts, amplified by the University Book Store's social pages. The survey was structured in two parts: general textbook buying behaviors and preferences, followed by sentiments and satisfaction with students' preferred textbook source. We collected 25 responses.

Key patterns:

• Low price and convenience were the most frequently reported factors in purchasing decisions
• ~1/3 of respondents used third parties like eBay, independent bookstores, or other students
• Most respondents made purchase decisions during the first week, despite textbook requirements being listed online ahead of time
• Higher satisfaction with the bookstore compared to third-party sources like Amazon

Stakeholder interviews

I coordinated semi-formal interviews with our sponsors at the bookstore, including CEO Trevor Peterson, COO Chris Rauls, Chief of Campus Operations Chris Zempel, and eCom Data Specialist Terence Truax. We focused on their needs, pain points, and objectives, particularly how the bookstore's indirect relationship with UW creates information gaps between the store and students.

A critical detail surfaced here: Washington law mandates that course materials be listed one month prior to the start of each course. The bookstore was already complying, but students weren't finding this information. The problem wasn't availability; it was discoverability.

Intercept interviews

At the start of spring quarter, we intercepted 21 students at the bookstore during peak buying hours. I helped design the intercept guide and facilitated interviews on-site. We displayed our user journey map prominently and invited students to pinpoint the step they found most frustrating, capturing targeted insights across different stages of the process.

These quick, informal conversations captured real-time feedback from students actively navigating the purchase process, capturing authentic behaviors and spontaneous reactions that don't surface in more structured settings.

Findings

Four themes emerged consistently across our research:

1. Overall satisfaction is high

In both our surveys and intercept interviews, students were frequently satisfied with their bookstore experiences. Most attributed this to the bookstore's knowledgeable and approachable staff. Students felt comfortable seeking help whenever they faced confusion during purchasing.

2. Purchase decisions peak in the first week

A majority of respondents made purchase decisions during the first week of the quarter, even though Washington law mandates that course materials be listed one month prior. Students got their information primarily from course syllabi rather than the bookstore's own listings, meaning the bookstore's early availability went largely unnoticed.

3. Information gaps on both sides

Students were often unaware of which books to get. Some asked for books that professors hadn't notified the bookstore about. From the operational side, our contextual inquiry revealed a compounding bottleneck: ~250 orders stacked up in the morning backlog on Day 1, with ~15 minutes of inventory lag time feeding into timing mismatches where students arrived before orders were ready.

4. Fragmented experience

The textbook ordering journey involved multiple disconnected platforms. Students had to identify required materials on one site (Canvas, MyPlan, a course website, instructor slides) and then purchase them on another. Around a third of survey respondents used third parties like eBay, independent bookstores, or other students, further fragmenting the journey.

Design Process

Our research surfaced four design implications:

1. Unify purchase and discovery: students shouldn't need multiple platforms to find and buy materials
2. Improve communication and transparency: clear, timely updates on orders, availability, and return policies
3. Support early decision-making: surface accurate book lists before the quarter begins
4. Surface affordable options: help students find the best price and format

Buyer personas and service blueprints

We created three buyer personas grounded in the students we observed and interviewed:

• Jason, a physical textbook buyer. English Literature junior who values the in-store experience but faces frustration with delayed access and high costs.
• Mia, a digital-first student. Economics sophomore who prefers eBooks and Day One Access but struggles with limited digital availability and fixed access periods.
• Tali, a last-minute shopper. Architecture second-year who waits until professors confirm required materials and relies on peer recommendations.

Each persona mapped to a distinct service design blueprint tracing their journey through the bookstore's system, from course registration through textbook pickup.

Speed sketching and narrowing

From the service blueprints, we identified seven key design opportunities, from surfacing textbooks during course registration to redesigning the eBook store page. All five team members generated solutions under timed constraints (~4 minutes each), then voted privately to narrow scope. Two concepts advanced: viewable textbooks during the registration process, and an editable textbook portal with push notifications.

The professor-portal pivot

Our low-fidelity designs explored both a student-facing and a professor-facing portal, where instructors would add required textbooks and have updates sync automatically to students. During stakeholder discussions, the bookstore indicated that a professor-facing portal was not feasible within current operational and technical constraints.

This was a defining moment. We had invested design effort into a dual-sided system, and stakeholder feedback told us half of it wasn't implementable. Rather than treating this as a setback, we pivoted to focus solely on the student experience. This scope change sharpened our design around what the bookstore could actually build, and scoping down in response to real constraints became one of the most valuable decisions of the project.

Mid-fidelity prototype

In mid-fidelity, we designed two pathways: students could either import their registered courses via NetID login, automatically populating their textbook list, or manually upload a list of required materials. We also added return deadline reminders to the student homepage.

Usability testing

We tested the mid-fidelity prototype with students to identify friction points before moving to hi-fi. Three specific changes emerged from testing:

1. Course dropdown: Students wanted to see all required and optional textbooks for each course upfront, without navigating into separate detail pages. We added an expandable dropdown for each course on the homepage.
2. External pricing in a separate tab: To help students focus on bookstore offerings while maintaining transparency, we moved external purchase options (Amazon, eBay) into a dedicated tab rather than mixing them inline.
3. Marketplace card redesign: Listing cards needed to surface price, condition, and seller information at a glance. We redesigned the cards so students could assess options without unnecessary navigation.

Solution

DubsBooks is a textbook buying portal designed to unify the fragmented journey. The portal creates an all-in-one destination for getting the right materials at the right time.

Smart course integration

Students log in with their existing UW NetID to instantly see required materials for their registered courses. If they prefer, they can also import courses manually for added flexibility. The portal also allows students to export their textbook list to bring with them to the physical store, bridging the digital and in-person experience.

Integrated alerts

Students receive real-time updates on their orders, helpful reminders for payments and returns, and clear information about Day One Access, keeping them informed and prepared from purchase to the first day of class. This directly addressed the information gaps and timing mismatches we observed in contextual inquiry.

Student-to-student marketplace

A peer exchange platform empowers students to buy and sell textbooks directly. This feature was a proactive design decision: while our survey data showed that around a third of students already used third-party channels like eBay, independent bookstores, or classmates to source textbooks, the marketplace concept wasn't directly requested by participants. We included it to bring those fragmented third-party transactions into a trusted, centralized platform, aligning with the bookstore's mission and the broader theme of unification that drove the project.

Revised service blueprint

After designing and testing DubsBooks, we returned to our initial service design blueprints to map where the portal now sits within the student's textbook acquisition process. The fragmented navigation of the bookstore website (browsing headers, searching for textbooks by course) was replaced by a streamlined NetID login that surfaces everything in one place. Many of the bookstore's existing backstage operations translated directly into DubsBooks' internal system.

Outcome

DubsBooks was presented at the HCDE Capstone Showcase on June 2, 2025, and delivered to the bookstore as a final prototype with supporting research documentation. The project was a capstone deliverable; the prototype was not implemented in production.

What the research produced was a reframing of the bookstore's challenge: the problem wasn't their service (which students rated highly) but the fragmented ecosystem surrounding it. This reframing, supported by 16 hours of contextual inquiry, 25 survey responses, 4 stakeholder interviews, and 21 intercept interviews, gave the bookstore a research-backed lens for evaluating their digital strategy as they continued their website redesign.

Limitations

Our sample sizes (n=25 survey, n=21 intercepts) were sufficient for thematic saturation in qualitative analysis, but limit the generalizability of any quantitative claims. The survey respondents were self-selected through mailing lists and social media, which may skew toward more engaged students. Intercept interviews, by nature, only captured students who physically visited the bookstore, missing those who had already abandoned the process entirely.

We also did not conduct usability testing at the scale or formality needed to make strong claims about task performance. The prototype was tested for directional feedback, not benchmarked against metrics.

Reflection

This project spanned two quarters and was, honestly, hectic, in both the positive and negative sense. Working with real clients in a high-ambiguity situation required constant alignment among five team members and adaptation when things didn't go as planned. I had overestimated the amount of time two quarters would give us; coordinating with sponsors, executing research plans, and adapting when recruitment fell short all compressed our timeline more than expected.

The professor-portal pivot taught me that scoping down isn't failure. It's a design decision. We didn't lose work; we gained clarity about what was implementable. In an industry context, this is the kind of constraint-driven adaptation that happens constantly, and learning to treat it as progress rather than loss was the most valuable takeaway from the project.

How we told the story of where we started and what we accomplished mattered as much as the work itself. These are the kinds of challenges that happen in industry: timeline pressure, stakeholder constraints, recruitment shortfalls. The output is a product that resulted from lengthy conversations and debates from people who cared about the work.

Appendix

Selected project artifacts (Google Docs and Figma links from the original capstone deliverables):

Artifact	Type
FigJam Research Board	Affinity maps, journey maps, synthesis
Project Declaration & Research Pre-Brief	Research strategy, methods rationale
Contextual Inquiry Observation Notes	Field notes from 16 hrs of shadowing
Survey Findings	Analysis of 25 survey responses
Intercept Interview Guide	Observation guide and protocol
Intercept Report	Compiled intercept data and analysis
Usability Testing Script	Testing protocol and tasks
Process Book (Figma)	Full project documentation