The gutenberg project website redesign

UX-focused redesign of The Gutenberg Project website.

Screenshots of various pages of the redesigned Gutenberg Project website.

Goal

Promoting reading by improving the user experience of The Gutenberg Project website and improving user retention

Challenge

Streamlining navigation and information architecture of the website

Strategy

Formulating a concrete critical task, analyzing the website user experience to determine the core issue making the task difficult to achieve, developing a solution to the discovered issue.

The core issues of the website, based on user testing and competitor research, were the lacking search functionality and the lack of follow-through and interconnection between books. Simply put, it was easy to find a particular book, but the website didn't have any way to encourage the user to stay and look for more.

Target Audience

  • Book lovers, reading for personal enjoyment
  • Younger audience, 18-30 years old
  • Engaged with digital content, high tech literacy
  • Wanting to access free books due to budget constraints

The Gutenberg Project Website Redesign

Process

Empathy Map

User experience map of Marina interacting with Project Gutenberg website, showing four quadrants: Says (doubts about site link, design, and content), Thinks (confusion about search and file formats), Feels (distrustful, confused, frustrated, tired), and Does (navigates search, views book pages, downloads Epub3, and tries advanced search).

POV Statement

A lover of reading e-books needs a way to find an interesting and free e-book because books are expensive and it’s hard to find one that would cater to your tastes.

User Personas Analysis

User persona profile titled The Bookworm, featuring a young woman sitting on a curb reading a book, along with her age, occupation as university student, education status, technical skills, goals, attitudes, and pain points related to digital book reading.
User persona profile titled 'The Researcher' featuring Dr. James Green, a 50-year-old university professor with a PhD and medium technical skills, sitting at a desk with a typewriter in front of a large bookshelf filled with books. The profile outlines goals to find rare historical texts, use public domain works, and access accurate metadata; attitudes emphasizing reliance on Project Gutenberg, valuing metadata and easy navigation; and pain points including lack of advanced search filters, inconsistent metadata, and confusing layout.

Competitor Analysis

Overview of Feedbooks website features including a large book selection, search functionality, recommendations tab, and clean layout with detailed pros and cons.
HathiTrust website review including strengths like clean layout and academic focus, weaknesses such as overwhelming feel, and screenshots of the site's search and document interface.
Evaluation of Standard Ebooks website highlighting strong sides like modern layout and mobile compatibility, weak sides like missing metadata and smaller book collection, with screenshots showing homepage, book summaries, download options, and ebook browsing interface.
Review summary of ManyBooks website showing its strengths, weaknesses, and a screenshot of its homepage featuring book genres, search bar, and a book download page.
Analysis of Goodreads website showing strong sides like community engagement and personalized recommendations, weak sides like outdated design, and screenshots of book ratings, recommendations, search and browse features.

Summary of Discovered Issues

Collected Insights

  • Standard Ebooks is the strongest competitor to Project Gutenberg; it follows the same goal of providing free public domain ebooks, and delivers a clean modern layout, good search functionality, recommendations, and very high-quality of the books themselves. Standard Ebooks gives a lot of insights into improving Project Gutenberg: in ways of layout and navigation, improving the search and the book page and adding recommendations.
  • Goodreads gives the idea of establishing a rating and reviewing system within the website: it would have to be simplified, yet it is a good direction for community engagement.
  • It also provides insight into the book recommendations system: users of the website can recommend books similar to the chosen one.
  • Feedbooks has the best book search functionality out of 5 competitors. It is not overwhelming but very thorough, suitable both for reading and research purposes.
  • Manybooks is pretty much a negative example: while the layout is more modern and engaging, it is cluttered and overwhelming and it doesn’t solve the user’s needs.
  • HathiTrust’s featured titles and collections are great for discovering new books.

Considerations for Redesign

  • The most important is the search functionality:
    • Thorough, but not overwhelming
    • Search by genre
    • Search by publication date, author, publisher, etc
    • Include both search and filtering the results
    • Quick and advanced searches
  • Discover & Featured sections
  • Recommendations for the next book based on the current
  • Reviewing and rating books (may be simplified)
  • Clear separate metadata section
  • Keeping the layout clean and easy to navigate
  • Many file formats and clear explanation of which to download and use
  • Making the book page engaging, providing a summary for the book and focusing on promoting the book to the reader

Result

Streamlined the user flows from the Home page to finding a particular book to finding a similar book through both the search and browsing paths.

Full prototype can be accessed here.

Wireframe and notes explaining navigation redesign for a website, including simplified dropdown menus, addition of audio books, browse collection, genre sub-navigation, and advanced search.
Presentation slide titled 'Search Functionality' explaining improvements to a website's search features with screenshots showing the old search options and the new streamlined search bar with advanced search fields.
Diagram illustrating website search result features including filtering options, active filters, advanced search results, sorting options, and filter categories by genre, language, period, and format.
Infographic explaining two browsing methods for the Gutenberg Project Collection with annotated screenshots of collection, genre preview, and genre browsing pages plus browsing page slider examples.
Design layout explanation for a book page showing navigation, metadata, download options, help page, and more files page with annotations and text details.
Book page design showing three sections: Readers also downloaded with book covers, Discover more in genres, and More by Agatha Christie, linked to detailed pages and featuring Mystery & Detective genre.
Presentation slide titled 'HOME PAGE' detailing redesign changes including reduced text box width, added Most Popular Books and Browse Genres sections, optimized Help, Donate, Terms of Use, less clutter, and improved footer with logo and social media links, alongside a screenshot of the redesigned Project Gutenberg homepage.
Diagram illustrating user flow for finding and downloading the book 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,' including search bar input, search results, book page, download options, format selection, and final download page.
Diagram showing User Flow 2 for a book collection website, illustrating navigation from main menu through browsing, filtering by genre and language, viewing book pages, discovering more mystery books, and downloading a study in scarlet.
Text slide titled 'Conclusion' listing prototyped pages, improved features, and a summary of efforts to enhance book search and browsing experience on a website.

© Anna Parkhomenko 2026. All rights reserved.