Activity manager app for those who aren’t good with their time management.
UX research & product design
Current
Timeline
August to October 2020
10 week duration
Product Concept
Tools
Pen & Paper
Sticky Notes
Google Suite
InVision
Whimsical
Figma
Current is meant for young professionals or adults who struggle with time management. Many who struggle with time management also struggle with their mental health.
Using insights gathered from my research into the relationship between time management and mental health, I was able to design, test, and validate an app concept that would be able to provide value to my end-user.
Roles played
Discovery, user research, information architecture, rapid prototyping, interaction design, content strategy, voice design
View product prototype
View mobile marketing mockup
View desktop marketing mockup
People with poor mental health can get overwhelmed by the number of tasks that encompass everyday life.
Health conditions characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behaviour, causing impaired functioning
Effects of poor mental health
Mental disorders are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities.
Mental disorders or disabilities
Discovery // Week 1
The challenge
I wanted to create something that would provide value to my friends and/or community. From personal experience, and through many late-night long talks with friends that people carry a lot more emotional struggles, mental health, or mental disabilities beneath the surface than most others would generally assume.
Secondary research
After adding to my existing knowledge, I learned that each mental disabilities or symptom had varying causes and effects – so no single approach would help. I almost became disheartened – until I noticed that they all have difficulty with time management.
- Enabling young adults to use less mental headspace on regular activities
- Enabling young adults to feel confident in handling their personal workload
- Enabling young adults to complete their regular activities in a timely manner
After gathering context, I found my problem space.
Who > what > why > how
Problem space
I was looking to explore solutions to help the management of regular activities or tasks for young adults who have had or have struggled with their mental health. 75% of mental health problems start between childhood to young adulthood.
Impact I want to create
- Finding solutions that can simplify task/activity management
- Help people stay reminded of various deadlines and obligations
- Solutions need to reinforce accountability while being forgiving
Assumptions led to proto-personas:
I now had to narrow down my problem space…
Having set a solid foundation, I went to validate my findings by interviewing people first-hand.
User research // Week 2
Assumptions
At this point, I believed that people with mental disorders could be struggling with regular activities or tasks and had a need to find better ways to manage their lives. As I went to gather volunteers for my user interviews, I mapped out my assumptions going in:
X-Axis
Hard to validate –> Easy to validate
Y-Axis
No big deal –> Risky
Assumption Mapping
I listed assumptions out on a 4-point scale to find major assumptions that were both risky and easy to validate – in order to determine which would need to confirmed for my product to have a solid value proposition.
User Interviews
I found 5 friends around 18 – 30 years of age to interview who all have had negative run-ins with their mental health for an extended period of time, in the present or past.
Expert Interview
Jacqueline – one of my UX cohort classmates – had an extensive work history as a caretaker for individuals with mental disabilities. From her experience, I learned that both low and high-functioning individuals generally have the same needs, just at different amounts.
Afterwards, I sorted my interview insights into pain-points, motivations, and behaviours:
People who have struggled with mental health do have trouble being consistent with their routines.
Interview results
User Insights
Activity planning – People want to be able to note down their activities somewhere so they don’t constantly have it on their minds, allowing them to feel less overwhelmed and better able to focus on the current task at hand.
Visual communication – people want to receive visual reminders with images and colour codes on their activity or task lists/calendars so they’re more intuitive to understand.
Regular notifications – people want to be notified of upcoming events and activities, so that they can mentally prepare for the task, and receive notifications just before an event starts.
Conclusion
User testing was kind to me and confirmed all of my assumptions. At least 3-4 interviewees were in agreement with very assumption. In addition, even low-functioning autistic or bipolar individuals had some similar preferences to the friends I had interviewed.
An activity planner that is mental-health friendly needs to communicate in a clear and visual manner.
User motivations
Personas
With my assumptions validated, I created two personas based on my research and interview findings. I adjusted accordingly when I learned that within my user demographic: (busy) young professionals cared much more about time management than other young adults:
They both come down to wanting something to help them manage their personal workload.
These insights were used to help chart a journey:
Experience mapping helped confirm my understanding of user needs.
Opportunities
Experience Mapping
I designed an experience map as a culmination of my user research. Touchpoints and channels data were gathered but omitted for brevity as a native phone app was a constraint for my project.
Opportunities
- To set up a visual, personalized and colour-coded task or activity list so users find it more mentally easing to use as a reference later on
- To set multiple reminders for activities so users don’t have to check the whole calendar list, look at everything at once, and get overwhelmed
- To help maintain focus or prevent procrastination during activities
- To help ease the mental transition between activities
- To provide strategies to allow users to return to a more relaxed state of mind
When it comes to keeping track of time:
- People want to note down their activities conveniently
- People want to be notified of their own upcoming activities
- People want to have colour-coded visual reminders
I felt confident after seeing how my interviews and earlier research validated my assumptions.
With a clear grasp of the user journey and experience, I began to brainstorm for solutions.
Product Features // Week 4
Competitive Analysis
From the few apps I checked via competitive analysis, none of them worked to address all the issues that were vital for my needs. However, I did end up drawing inspiration from all of them.
Productive was an app that could possibly work towards my problem space as well – except:
- It was more of a habit builder in the sense of healthy living
- It had more of a “do even more” vibe/feel than “handle your schedule”
Interesting content
A unique feature that Productive had was a “vacation mode” where you could pause all of your habits and return later. However, as vacation mode is an all or nothing action, and I didn’t believe turning it would be a good idea for someone trying to stay on top of their regular schedule.
User Stories
Task Flows
After getting some inspiration from a few existing market products, I created a list of user stories and epics and focused on the few user stories I felt addressed user pain points the best:
User Story
As a young professional, I want to look at a visual activity list so that I can tell my activities apart at a glance.
User Story
As a young professional, I want to be able to prioritize activities so that I can decide what’s important.
User Story
As a young professional, I want to look at a visual activity list so that I can tell my activities apart at a glance.
User Story
As a young professional, I want to delay activities so that I can revisit them when my mental health is better.
The task of creating an activity was used as a general reference guide moving forward.
Component structure
I set up an initial layout and component inspiration board to help my imagination – but it ended up being a bit more than that and guided my art direction a bit.
Before sketching, I drafted out a component list to note down some desired features:
After creating a component list, I drafted up some concept sketches with the crazy 8s method…
From there, I created some quick concept sketches…
The sketches were then translated into wireframes…
Users thought my designs flowed, made sense, visualized information well, and felt intuitive.
Rapid Iteration // Week 5
Prototyping
After I completed a few flows on my medium-fidelity wireframes, I ran 2 rounds of user testing in order to see if my app was intuitively usable. Using this script, I had users run through 5 tasks to check my app’s general usability.
My wireframes were designed with 3 flows:
- Creating a one-time activity
- Completing an activity
- Creating a routine activity
User testers did not encounter problems with the flow of my prototype, however…
Corner icons don’t imply priority
Almost all testers did not manage to understand the corner icons indicating high priority. While nice to have, having a noticeable indicator is not as important as a seamless experience, so it was removed in favour of a simple asterisk.
Checkmark not clickable
Secondly, the tiny checkmark corner was meant to imply swiping but only under half of my testers managed to make the connection. In order to make it more usable for everybody, I made it clickable to complete an activity.
Confirmation modal
Even though users would quickly realize that creating a routine on a different day would not show for today’s list, I was told it did give a bit of momentary anxiety. I created a quick confirmation window in response.
With key issues addressed, I moved on towards designing the brand experience.
The look and feel would play a huge part in facilitating accessibility for mental health.
User Interface // Week 6
Visual Identity
After I had my initial designs validated, I set to work on determining the brand identity of my app, going through multiple iterations of moodboard to end up with this:
Moodboard Iteration
On my first attempt, I added in things that felt easing and relaxing, with concepts like:
Sunsets, warm light, waves, soft clouds, sand, bioluminescence, jellyfish, sticky notes
As I realized that my moodboard was not consistent overall, I narrowed it down until I felt unable to take away anything else, settling with the following keywords:
Inspiring, hopeful, adaptable
Softness lightness, weightlessness
Then, I found UI inspiration that I could learn from:
I applied my learnings towards my branding:
Typography
Ubuntu was used as my general typeface as it’s curved and has rounded edges, which I felt was mental-health friendly and soft.
My product “Current” would be a play on words: a current day and currents from the sea.
Logo Design
For the logo, I substituted the C with Vollkorn’s typeface. As for the other letters, I raised the x-height of the other letters to make it look more full. The accompanying wave icon would help solidify the brand association.
I drew my colour inspiration from this photo:
Then, I adjusted it to create my colour palette:
I worked on a simple graphic to complete the brand:
Brand-inspired feature
Daily check-in
User Story
As a young professional, I want to delay activities so that I can revisit them when my mental health is better.
Turn off unimportant activities
As I thought back to a user story I hadn’t particularly addressed, my branding helped me come up with a feature that my users would love. If you were calm, start the day as usual – but if you were stressed, all but the important activities would be hidden for when the user felt better.
Putting it together
A dark UI background scheme was used as it was a great way to accommodate a variety of colours to add contrast and bring eyes towards the activity cards. A light background might have caused accessibility concerns with bright colours seeming too similar to the background.
Concept Refinement
Future Steps
- Possible ways to integrate and import data from online calendars
- Add value towards the activity list with the concepts for “focus” and “routine” section
- Consider the degree of customization on the settings that would be adjustable
To introduce and market my product to a wider community, I designed a marketing website:
The mental health benefits were not directly mentioned because of existing stigmas.
Responsive Design // Week 9
Marketing
I drew back on information from user pain-points and motivations to market my product. By mentioning all the pain points my product would address, I could appeal to my target user.
Avoiding stigmas
This way, I could avoid potentially limiting my reach towards anybody with stigmas regarding mental health. People can get self-conscious using apps meant for someone who is mentally unwell or suffers from mental disability.
I considered how I could design towards an immersive brand experience…
A voice user interface would be a great addition.
Multi-Platform Design // Week 10
Lifestyle
Thinking on how on how to further improve my product and deliver a more complete lifestyle experience, I went back to storyboarding:
On the go
Smartwatch integration would be able to give a quick glance or overview of your activities without having to unlock your phone. This would be great in being a bit more efficient in your regular use and is quite convenient to use when you’re on the move.
Reducing distraction
With voice user interface (VUI) you could avoid using the phone during busy sessions. Your phone contains a world of distractions just a simple tap away, and so reducing the need to check could keep temptation at bay.
I expanded on VUI integration because I felt it addressed user pain points a lot more accurately – namely staying on-task during and in-between new activities:
User Story
When I’m finished with an activity, I want to cross it without using my phone, so that I can avoid being distracted.
User Story
When I’m not sure what I need to do next, I want to be told what my next activity is so that I can use my time wisely.
User Story
When I find out I have something to do, I want to note it down by voice, so that I don’t have to stop what I’m currently doing.
Intents
I settled on three main intents – telling you your next activities, completing your next activity, and creating an activity – that my user might want to access via VUI.
After adding to the complete experience, I considered the impact of my creation:
The Tarot Cards of Tech provided me with some thoughtful prompts to think about.
Things to consider
Design Impact
Bad actors
A risk to vanguard against is if this product was released is if data from this app could be taken and used to exploit user weaknesses. For example:
- Data regarding the time of day people get distracted the most could inform an ad campaign
- Data could inform marketers of when consumer profiles would be likely to impulse buy
Safeguarding trust
If any activities disappeared due to bugs or errors – or if push notifications failed to send for high priority activities it would have major consequences for my consumers.
- Core functionality would have to be constantly tested and maintained
Empowerment and inclusion
I could move towards is to bringing low-functioning people with mental disabilities under the user umbrella. To do this, caregivers would need to be able to lend a helping hand.
- Helper functionality would give caregivers / guardians control to edit and lock activities
Considering edge cases
A large consumer segment that I’ve neglected have been “power productivity users” – people that want to life hack to the absolute max. Instead of working to maintain their lifestyles, they would be seeking to go beyond their current capabilities.
- Activity grouping could be enabled through user settings for further customization
After consideration, I took time to reflect…
It was a learning experience to design a concept that I’m personally passionate about.
Lessons learned
Insights
This was the first time I had designed an idea from conception to realization, and so I went through and learned quite a lot throughout the course of these 10 weeks:
Creative confidence is not the stuff of legend, but a result of dedicated and user-focused research. Seeing the same user insights over and over was very reassuring.
Receiving human feedback felt psychologically different than reading research papers: their stories inspired me throughout the project.
Looking into extremes of your target market: from the least likely to the most likely is a lot more useful than you’d think – by thinking about what your user is not, you learn who they are.
Fewer shades of grey will save time down the road. The 10 shades of grey in my wireframes were ridiculously hard to apply colour to – until I started over with just 3-5 shades of grey.
Constructive feedback from instructors and peers was instrumental. They help confirm anchor your wandering thoughts and helped spot things you might have overlooked.
Time is friend and foe, especially when time constraints are tight. I struggle to meet them as I tend to shoot for the stars, but they have helped my workflow evolve.
