When I’m opening the app, the main reason is because I have just finished a book or have made progress in a book and I’d like to log it. I find myself having to do a lot of typing and moving around in an unintuitive way to do that. Letterboxd and Twitter and pretty much every other app have conditioned me to expect a “post” button in prominence on the app’s main toolbar but this doesn’t seem available.
I think it would be so much easier to do this if there was simply a + button instead of the Explore button on the bottom window. + indicates to me that I’m ready to log a book, while Explore doesn’t feel defined at all. Like what’s the difference between Exploring and Trending, instinctually? It’s kinda difficult to define. And then when you do go into the Eplore tab, it’s mostly just a bunch of loose FAQ links that just link back to tabs like Home and Trending that are already represented on the main row of UX tabs. It’s so confusing
We do plan to get rid of the Explore tab altogether.
The equivalent of a "+" to add a new book would be the Search option, which allows you to add books straight from there. Unlike something like Letterboxd, most people on Hardcover prefer adding books as want to Read and then coming back to mark them as started. That means that the "+" action could have very different meanings.
Another thing we're planning is a Dashboard which would showcase things you're most excited about on the main page you see when you open the app.
I agree with this suggestion especially on the mobile app, it takes too long to log books which should be the most direct feature. I guess the major issue would be figuring out a way to collapse the Explore and Trending tabs. I feel the tabs are already redundant on the website with the addition of the Discover and Browse tabs but I don't know how that can be brought to the app.
Coming back to this. I find myself using Hardcover less and less because the UX still feels unintuitive