Harmony

Ideation

To better understand the context of our problem, we outlined thoughts and actions of university students managing their time through a storyboard. With this visual contextualization, we analyzed how existing time management apps could help university students allocate their time better. Finding ways that these apps did and did not serve the needs of students, we brainstormed ideas on how to make time management more interactive and accountable.

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Features Brainstorm

Our main goal with our app was to focus on improving a student work-life balance. To understand how people manage time with apps, we analyzed key features and requirements of commonly used time management, focus, and productivity apps like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Apple Fitness, TickTick, and Flow.

We found that the most common features and strengths of these apps included:

Calendar view for creating, viewing, editing and sending invitations to events

Google Calendar, Apple and TickTick all emphasize the user experience and customizability to set up their own calendar events.

Notifications for upcoming events and flow durations

Google Calendar, Apple, TickTick, and Flow all included the options to set up notifications for events and timers.

Friendly competition for accountability

Apple Fitness gave users the ability to compete with friends and keep each other accountable with achievement badges and goals setting.

Synthesis: How might we make time management more efficient for university students?

Smart recommendations and notifications for break times and meals.

We noticed that Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and TickTick did not provide a way for users to automatically block times for breaks or meals. In a busy calendar schedule, it is easy to forget to schedule in breaks, so we came up with the idea of automatic recommendations that would populate a student’s calendar after they had been working on a specific task for a while.

Integrated pomodoro timer in calendar events to promote focus.

We noticed that pomodoro timers in TickTick and Flow were not tied to any specific work sessions or events. Hence, we decided to make the timer more integrated into calendar events so that users could stay focused and be mindful of the time that they had blocked out for a work or study session.

Social Tracker and Group Event Creation

We noticed that creating calendar events with groups of people were often tedious as the user would have to enter people one by one. We came up with the idea to have preset group spaces for different social activities so that a student can quickly create calendar events with these groups. Additionally, the students can view how their friends are sticking to their social goals and even schedule a hangout with friends that might need help to achieve their social goal.

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Design

Usability Testing & Iteration

We conducted a usability test on 3 university students by using our paper prototypes and presented them to the with a scenario and a list of tasks. The testing helped us identify areas to improve the flow and features of our app. Prior to conducting the usability testing, we established a usability protocol to keep us aligned as a team.

Additionally, we created a user scenario with tasks to stress test the main functionalities of our features and gather information on how university students navigated through our app.

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Describe the goals of the app, confirm user consent and participation and set the tone for the testing environment–having users “think aloud” and provide an open space for users to ask questions.

Provide context by walking the user through a scenario and having them complete tasks using the paper prototypes of the app.

Notable Insights

We summarized our findings for each of the feature’s flows based on our observations of the users’ experience in completing tasks within the scenario we provided them.

All participants understood with the general solution and purpose of our product, and they also provided useful critiques of the app layout and design:

Smart Recommendations & notifications

Calendar events and smart recommendations were easy to navigate and approachable.

😀 ✅

Participants liked that there was a way for them to be reminded of meals to eat during the day. One suggestion was to have the option to set a template so that when the suggested meal or break gets added to their calendar that they can easily see specific snacks or things to do while they are on their break.

Pomodoro Timer

Starting tasks within a scheduled event was complicated and confusing.

😕🚫

Some participants expressed that it might be too complicated to start a task within a calendar event since it was a bit confusing to navigate through the page if there were too many tasks on the screen. If we could simplify the design and make it easier to navigate across the screen, it would be much easier to use for people of all ages.

Social tracker and group events

Suggested meal and break times are straightforward and easy to navigate

🙂 ✅

Participants expressed their concern over displaying metrics to compare activity with friends since it was possible that it might foster some negative comparisons between the user and their friends. Although there was a possibility to be seen negatively, some of the users expressed that the feature is a great addition because it can create friendly competition between friends on bettering their

Redesign

Due to the time constraints we were given in this project, some of the features that we had designed–such as the friends and groups activity page feature and the pomodoro timer–were not fully executed. I decided to go back and complete the full user flow of the app to improve the user experience and engagement based on the feedback that we had gotten.

I decided to create a user persona, map the information architecture and update the design system for the following reasons:

→ 👤 User persona = Empathizing with who we are designing for. We defined our target users, but we did not have a clear user persona card that could better contextualize them. I felt that a succinct visual card could help remind us who we are designing for.

→ 🧱 Mapped information architecture = Visualizing pain areas and key components of the app. One of our key points of feedback was that the flow did not make sense from one screen to another. I decided that one way that we could have improved the overall user flow was assessing which touch points caused the user to become overwhelmed.

→ 🎨 Updated the design system = Reduces friction in prototyping. Our designs lacked cohesion, so I wanted to consolidate the primitives and components that made up the design system in order to reduce the friction of navigation between screens.

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Wrapping up Harmony

Intro Screens

To get users acquainted with the app, I decided to create an experience that gave a quick overview of the different types of actions that they could take with the app.

Start Tasks and Take Breaks

Users can get automated tasks and breaks scheduled into their calendar based on their usual times of activity.

Meet with Friends

It's important to socialize after long periods of isolation.

View Friends Activity

See trends of how your other friends are doing in terms of socializing and see if you're meeting your own goals.