Ripple Reads Subscription Service

Ripple Reads is a subscription service that delivers antiracist children’s books to families each month. Each kit includes a carefully selected book, a discussion guide, and online resources and activities designed to help families spark and sustain meaningful conversations about race.

🧩 Problem Statement

While families appreciated the mission and quality of the books, the client wanted to better understand how families were engaging with the kits once they arrived:

• Were parents and children using the discussion guides?

• Were online activities being accessed and completed?

• Were any instructions unclear or barriers preventing full engagement?

The goal was to identify pain points in the family experience and uncover opportunities to make the materials more intuitive, engaging, and easy to use.

🔍 Research Approach

As a the UX researcher on the project, I employed a mixed-methods approach:

• Contextual Inquiry: Observed how families unboxed and used the kit in real contexts.

• In-depth user interviews with families to explore perceptions of online materials, subscription service, and content of books. Explored motivations, barriers, and emotional reactions.

• User Surveys: Distributed surveys to collect quantitative data on engagement frequency, satisfaction, and likelihood to continue subscribing. These responses helped validate qualitative themes and measure overall sentiment toward the product.

  
  

🧠 Key Findings

• Families consistently used the books as intended, reading them together upon each delivery.

• While engagement was high (family reading book together), families expressed confusion on how to access and integrate online materials into the family book club.

• Desire for an app. App would create more ease and would boost engagement with online materials.

🛠️ Recommendations

Based on these insights, I recommended:

• Exploring options for digital resources or community forums where families could share experiences and strategies.

• Development of an app that served as a Ripple Reads Hub. Families could have access to the book in digital format alongside online resources. Families could rank books in app to provide further user feedback to company.

✅ Impact

The research informed the product team's decision to enhance the subscription service with community forums and development of social media and app.