Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tom Killeen

I love side projects, they’re really important for a designer. For me, they let me try my hand at skills outside of my UX specialism at the BBC.

About a year ago, after finishing a big project, I was looking for a fun new opportunity that would let me develop an idea into a real product that people actually used.

All I needed was for inspiration to strike.

It was memes like this that got me thinking

75% of Americans have used their phones in the bathroom. Some people hack their own workarounds when they need to, that’s how important bathroom reading is to them, but there’s no successful digital product designed for this task. I knew it was time for toilet reading to be given an overhaul!

Finding the perfect thing to read on a bathroom break is a great problem to solve — the target audience is huge, people do it at least once a day (keep an eye on that fibre intake) and it’s something everyone can relate to.

It sounds like a silly idea, but that’s perfect for a side project, it gives the opportunity to have some fun and not take things too seriously. Plus, the subject is quirky enough to get people talking.

I came up with the idea to make an app containing a collection of short stories, the perfect length for a bathroom visit. I had a hunch that people don’t care too much about what they’re reading, so I’d give them a new random story each visit, that way there was no time wasted browsing.

Now I just had to make the thing.

Down to business

The perfect solution would be a mobile app as it could support offline content for those blackspot bathrooms. However, an app would be a big investment — testing the idea as a mobile website would be a much quicker way to release and learn, so I went with this approach.

The main challenge was finding strong stories. I knew about the fantastic work that Project Gutenberg does in archiving out-of-copyright books, so I took a look at their content and terms of use.

I discovered they had a huge range of short stories and all their content is completely public domain, which was perfect for my needs. I set about collecting a good set of content.

The nature of the content available actually gave a new twist to the idea. Gutenberg has a loads of classic short stories, from authors like Aesop, Tolstoy and Robert Louis Stevenson — maybe if you use Poop Fiction, you might actually leave the bathroom wiser than when you arrived!

Who would have though toilet reading could be so high-brow?

On a roll

Once I had all the stories I needed, I sketched out some interface designs. The key was provide really simple access to the content and a really great reading experience.

When I had a functioning prototype, I tested the concept worked and added a few tricks of the trade to enhance the user experience. Plus, I added a bit of humour to lighten things up.

Then I pulled it all together and showed it to a few friends to get early feedback. This led to a new feature — grouping stories based on reading time, so you could choose a short, medium or long story.

Story length peronalised to your poop

Once that was done, I was ready to release Poop Fiction to the world. Check it out below.

Poop Fiction

We pick the perfect story for your bathroom break — the only paper you need is on the roll — readpoopfiction.com

Making a splash

The result was a satisfying, fun project. I found it rewarding to force myself to focus on the key features of the experience to make sure I turned around the project quickly.

I wasn’t prepared for the publicity the site got. Design Taxi were the first to run an article about Poop Fiction, after that lots more websites picked up the story including Gizmodo, Product Hunt and (my personal favourite) Good Housekeeping — leading to one restrained Twitter user stating “Poop Fiction is the Greatest American Invention Since The iPhone”.

The best part of all this was that users engaged with the idea and began to use the site regularly, it was great to check Google Analytics and imagine real people enjoying the site I created… although I don’t want to think about what else they were enjoying at the time…

Logging off.

Poop Fiction — making a splash with digital toilet reading was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Poop Fiction — making a splash with digital toilet reading

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