For my first task as a participant in the Design Mentorship Program organized by Friends of Figma Africa, I evaluated the user experience of my favorite mobile app; Lithium. I took notes of my likes and dislikes, jotted down some intuitive features I think the app contains, and how easy it is to accomplish my goal of using the app.
What is Lithium?
Lithium is a mobile application that enables readers to read ePub books. Once you download an ePub version book, it automatically appears on the Lithium app on your phone. On the app, you can see all downloaded ePub books, highlight pages & sentences, take notes, and continue from whatever page you stopped.
Things I Like About Lithium
Easy-to-use Features: Lithium is an easy-to-use app, and it has a lot of intuitive features. It has bookmarks, highlighting options, and a table of contents, which is simply great.
No Advertisements: If you read ebooks, you might relate to the frustration of having different ads popping up and disrupting your reading flow. Lithium allows you to read books with the absence of any kind of ads.
Amazing Themes and Fonts: Lithium offers different themes, including a dark theme that isn't hard on the eyes, and you can change fonts to your liking while still having the option to view the default font and style.
Automatic Book Detection: On Lithium, your last-read book automatically comes to the top of the list. Also, it automatically syncs all books to continue from the last page you stopped.
Category Creation: Lithium allows you to create categories so your books are organized, which is a very amazing feature.
Things I Dislike About Lithium
No Vertical Scrolling: On Lithium, you can only scroll vertically in a chapter. At the end of the chapter, you still have to "turn the page", which is not a very nice feature.
No Backup: On Lithium, there is no backup of the books themselves. This would be very devastating if one were to lose their phone.
No In-built Word Dictionary: Having to switch between a dictionary app and an e-reader is not nice at all. Having an in-built word dictionary in the Lithium app would be so helpful.
Generally, Lithium helps me achieve my reading goals without difficulty, due to how easy it is to use. The user experience is top-notch as well, quite different from most e-readers I've used over the years.
Thank you for reading! I hope you liked this review. If you're an avid reader like me, please share what e-readers you use and what you like about them.