BiblioFi

Overview

The campus library at Infosys, Mysore ran entirely by hand. The brief: design the complete member experience of a library app for it - onboarding, book discovery, seat booking and fine tracking.

Role

UX Design Lead

Platform

iOS

Context

UX internship · Infosys

Team

1 designer (me) · 10 iOS engineers · 1 product owner

The problem was uncertainty, not the catalogue

We expected the main problem to be the book catalogue. It wasn't. The catalogue was fine. The problem was uncertainty before arriving: students couldn't know if a book was available or a seat was free without physically going there first.

Students surveyed

38

In-depth interviews

8

Observation sessions

3

Librarians consulted

2

“I walked 20 minutes to the library last month, and the book wasn't there. I'd already planned to sit in my usual spot, but of course you can't actually reserve one. I just went home. I haven't been back since.”

Three features, each from one finding

• Smart book discovery. Students arrived with specific titles in mind, so search by genre, by author or by barcode shows real-time availability before the trip. A recommendation engine came first, and was dropped: it left the real question - is this book available right now? - unanswered.
• Study seat booking. Seat unavailability in exam season was the most-mentioned pain point across all 8 interviews. Students see the study hall, pick a seat and get a confirmation before leaving home.
• Scan and search. Observation showed students pulling books off shelves one by one to check them. A barcode scan answers it in under 3 seconds, no librarian needed. A campus-map shelf locator was explored first; students already knew the layout.

The hardest tradeoff

The seat waitlist tested better than booking-only in concept testing. But its push notification backend would have taken two weeks to build, leaving no time to test the core flows. A well-tested booking flow at handoff is worth more than a partially-built waitlist, so the waitlist went into the Phase 2 doc with full specs.

Tested before handoff

• Search a book: 18/20. 2 participants hesitated with the filter options before needing guidance.
• Book a seat: 17/20. 3 found the confirmation step slightly unclear; it was restructured in the final iteration.
• Check notifications: 19/20. 1 participant missed the icon placement at first.

The Figma specs and design system went to the iOS engineering team at internship end. These are the final pre-handoff results, not production metrics.

What it didn't solve

BiblioFi solves the student's experience, not the librarian's. Every booking still needs manual work on their side. The admin panel was de-scoped; it is the most important thing missing, and what I'd prioritise in Phase 2.