Librear Audiobook Discovery Experience
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Librear Audiobook Discovery Experience

Category
Branding, Digital, Product, UX
About This Project

The Setup

Why pay for audiobooks when you can borrow them for free? Local libraries around the world lend millions of audiobooks at no cost. Most people never use them, because finding, borrowing and listening has always been harder than tapping “buy.”

Librear puts those collections right at your fingertips. Listeners can search, browse and borrow audiobooks with a single tap, then join a community of readers to discover, review and share their favorite books with friends and family.

What I Led

I designed the Librear discovery experience: search, borrowing and listening, all built around your local library’s collection. The goal was an app that feels as inviting as a good bookstore and as polished as any paid audiobook service, while keeping the library at its heart.

A few ideas guided the work:

  • Covers do the talking. Big cover art, ratings and runtimes answer “is this for me?” at a glance.
  • One clear action per screen. The main button changes with availability, from Borrow to Place hold, Continue or Return, so nobody has to think about library rules.
  • Built for hours of listening. Audiobooks run long, so the player, sync and bookmarks are designed for listening across days and devices.
  • Real people, real taste. Recommendations come from readers with similar interests, not just an algorithm.

What We Delivered

  • A personal start. Onboarding asks for a few favorite genres and a quick rating of books you know, so the first shelf already fits your taste.
  • Your library’s catalog. Browse everything from classics to NYT best-sellers through Latest, Trending and Recommendations, plus community lists and genres.
  • Search your way. Smart filters, results with synopses, a “just in and available” shelf, and voice search for when your hands are full.
  • Borrow in one tap. Title pages show cover art, ratings and runtime, with borrow, hold and return built in, and a bookshelf of loans and holds with due dates.
  • Download or stream. Save titles for offline listening, or stream them to save space.
  • Lists and tags. Build a must-read list and any other lists you want, then share them.
  • Synced everywhere. Your listening position syncs automatically across all your devices.
  • Real recommendations. Suggestions from real people, tuned to your taste, plus favorites from communities who share your interests.
  • A player made for long books. Adjust speed from 0.6x to 3.0x, swipe to skip forward or back, browse chapters, and add bookmarks, notes and highlights at any moment.
  • Every library card in one place. Add multiple libraries and find nearby branches on a map.

Librear made borrowing from the library feel as easy as buying, and helped readers find their next great listen through each other.

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