Add Social Activity Feed to My Books page

[mekarpeles]

Proposal

Context

• See: #7704; the My Books page is the personalized page a patron goes to in order to access their loans, reading log, lists, and a feed of community updates:

In #8607, a Follow feature was added, as well as a "feed" page (e.g. https://openlibrary.org/people/mekBot/books/feed) for viewing community updates

Goodreads uses the homepage for similar purposes.

Opportunity

This epic calls for the enhancement of the My Books page so:

1. it is no longer an empty, unactionable ghost town for new patrons
2. active patrons are shown fresh, relevant, actionable results that evolve over time, rather than static results
3. we can promote following as a discovery mechanism for books

If done correctly, the My Books page will become a dynamic, useful page that behaves like a monthly email news letter, showcasing what's happening in the community, what's trending, activity of those you follow, recommendations of who to follow, etc.

Proposal

By improving the Trending Now page #10241 to showcase patrons and the capability to follow and by using this component as the basis for a new section on the main My Books page, the page can be made useful to all registered patrons, by showcasing:

• trending books and patrons to follow (to those not yet following)
• recent activity of followed readers (for patrons already following other readers)

Instructions

Before asking to be assigned, please help by:

1. Proposing a 🎨 design for "My Feed" section to be added to the My Books page or...
2. By asking any clarifying questions you may have about this feature

Thank you! ❤️

Justification

Problem

What problem does this proposal address & for what audience(s)?

When patrons first create an account, they are redirected to an empty My Books experience feels like a ghost town:

Furthermore, even active patrons (i.e. those who currently use Open Library often), are presented with a fairly static experience that is limited to showcasing actions they've taken on the website. The few/minority of patrons who follow other readers (since the feature doesn't have broad adoption yet) have to click on their feed link in order to see any updates from the community.

1. This feed is unknown to many.
2. Many other patrons don't yet follow anyone because the follow function is not easily discoverable.

TL;DR:

• The follow feature is not easily discoverable
• The value of the feed is buried for those who do the follow feature
• In all cases, the My Books main page is fairly static and can be evolved to solve these other two shortcomings.

Impact

What's the predicted impact, how do we measure, & what does success look like?

This ghost town experiences impacts every new patron. Furthermore, the experience misses out of the opportunity to better utilize the the Follow Feature #8607 -- both to showcase the rich, interesting activity of one's social network and also to recommend people to follow.

Research

Are there any precedents or findings from other projects or studies that support this feature? (link or screenshot if possible)

The Goodreads homepage and activity feed is likely the best exemplar of this feature

Breakdown

Requirements Checklist

• [ ] Prerequisite: #10241
• [ ] the My Books /feed styling (of the reader) should also be upgraded to use similar styles and markup to the new styles we introduced in #10241 to the trending now page
• [ ] Add the new "My Feed" social activity feed section to the My Books landing page, that uses a new template called SocialActivityFeed.html in https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/tree/master/openlibrary/templates/account. Books either come from the feed API or trending now API (conditionally, described below). The mobile view should have a similar header to the other sections. The desktop view should be styled somewhat similarly to the Lists section, in that it will have its own unique body design other than a carousel.
• [ ] The /people/{username}/books/feed feed page should be updated so if the patron is not following anyone, they see

The design of the new SocialActivityFeed.html template requires discussion/prototypoing though should be somewhat inspired by the existing My Books /feed UI + styling from the pubsub feed PR #8607 and ideally use of $:macros.SearchResultsWork to render each book.

This proposal adds a new section to the My Books main page with the label My Feed, which conditionally renders 2 books for:

• [ ] Patrons who don't follow anyone yet (e.g. a newly registered patron)

  • Fetch 2 books from the https://openlibrary.org/trending/now API from the get_activity_stream(limit=limit) API from #6014 (which calls Bookshelves.get_recently_logged_books(limit=limit)
  • Renders text description: "Here's the latest activity around the library. Follow readers to personalize your feed"
  • Clicking on the title brings you to /people/{username}/books/feed
  • Displays link at the bottom right that says, "Browse more community activity ›"

• [ ] Patrons who do follow readers

  • Fetch 2 books from PubSub.get_feed(username) API w/ limit=2 (may require extending the API)
  • No text description
  • Displays link at the bottom right that says, "Browse more community activity ›"

Other than the title and where it links to, the design/experience for this new component should be broadly the same for both experiences and look something like the trending now view and feed view.

Here's one concept:

Related files

• See #6014: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/pull/6014/files#diff-b352027e4688f5ef14e5e23f6a988bba495e769f8cecce80c404a23d82f5902a

• See My Books Feed designs (e.g. https://openlibrary.org/people/mekBot/books/feed) Implemented by #8607 in https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/pull/8607/files#diff-1c0a702d7b1bad810adce7c001416b5996968d117077f629ff52ddff4668f56fR45-R51

Tutorial

For Refer to the #8607 PR to see where we're rendering the /feed UI. This makes use of PubSub.get_feed(username) API which we can modify with e.g. a limit=3 to retrieve the latest 3 items from the patron's feed.

• https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/pull/8607/files#diff-8c22184d247c07c79f73aef1e67478b4a5ad1dfbdcf2b5a6eec71984b6fd0bdcR139-R152

[Spaarsh]

@mekarpeles it is indeed a huge step towards making the platform more lively for new patrons.

I was wondering if we could ask a patron at the time of signing up to pick any 3 subjects that they would be interested in. Since the trending books only reflect the general readers and may not fit well to the needs of readers with interests that do not fall in the average set. This would ensure that the new patrons get a more relevant feed. Spotify and Medium do this for new users.

A "Trending in {Subject}" feed is what I am thinking of. We could use the trending API and filter the results by the patron's subject of interest. If there is no book trending in that Subject, then we simply do not display its section until there is one.

The philosophy behind this is to make a new patron engage with the new environment via means of familiarity (through interested Subjects), making the initial action of reading their first book on the platform easier.

However on the flipside of it, we will loose our current one-step sign up process. Perhaps this might need some weighing of the pros and cons.

Thanks!

TL;DR Ask new patrons for their subjects of interest at sign up and show the trending feed based on the interested subject. Pro - will help readers find the first book they will read on the platform more easily Con - we loose our one-step sign up process.

[mekarpeles]

@Spaarsh I think having topic selection be a new step to onboarding is a good idea we were just discussing during our last staff call, though I think we should create a separate issue to track that idea :)

[NishantSinghhhhh]

@mekarpeles can I work on this issue ??

[mekarpeles]

Hi @NishantSinghhhhh, I'm also tagging @ragipidavid & @krishnaGauss who have been collaborating on the Follow Feature and Activity Feed.

I think the piece we're currently working on is the design.

Something that would be useful is a proof-of-concept PR that fetches the right data and pulls it into the My Books summary page (i.e. https://openlibrary.org/account/books e.g. https://openlibrary.org/people/mekBot/books)

The idea is, to fetch a certain number of results (e.g. 1 page) from the feed endpoint: https://openlibrary.org/people/mekBot/books/feed and render it as a carousel under a placeholder header like "Activity Feed".

If you're willing to give that a try, I think it would be a useful/meaningful contribution.

[NishantSinghhhhh]

@mekarpeles , I am willing to take up the issue and will start working on it

[NishantSinghhhhh]

@mekarpeles , I am working on the issue, I will raise a PR once I have the code ready and all the test cases pass

[jimchamp]

Given the time constraints of this feature, and the challenges of testing following in local environments, this likely requires staff.