There has always been a point in everyone’s life when their world seems to be in chaos and there is no time to save it.
I am a UX designer and recently I did some research on the daily activities of my busy colleagues who find it very difficult to utilize their time properly and end up with poor health, rescheduling meetings at last minute and not having any idea on what to do during their free time.
With a few days of making my colleagues feel uncomfortable by following them around and keeping an eye on their daily routine I realized that time management is a huge issue which they consider are “well managed”. Although from my point of view it was clear that work/life balance went out the window along with their work efficiency, quality and health as they always extended their work hour till late at night.
Time management was a clear issue, while maintaining health was another issue that could not be ignored. I felt obligated to come up with a solution and help my hard working colleagues manage their time better.
I did some research and came up with a paper prototype and a storyboard that had a basic solution to the time management problem — Adding events into a personal app that records the user’s activity.
This was just the start of the prototype. I had to test it out with my user’s to get a better understanding. Based on their reactions and frustrations I conceptualized and came up with major changes redoing the home screen and few other features.
Now there was a solution — an APP to plan your day with all your activities and events and a planner to plan your week and vacations. Now my users could keep a day plan ready and organize their remaining day.
Tackling the next problem was a challenge. My users would usually skip lunch to continue meeting deadlines and visiting clients. Adding in a unique function in the app where a user can tap on the food button and nearby restaurants are shown on a map. Now they don’t have to hesitate searching for restaurants and skipping lunch. I also added a fun section which can be used to find fun activities nearby during situation where users have some free time to kill.
Pushing this concept a step further I decided to come up with a solution for those days where people had no work and had no idea what to do. I created a tab where users can select a hobby, an activity or if they feel adventurous then tap on “Surprise me” to get a task which they would have never considered.
Throughout the whole process I have made many iterations to ensure my users would have an amazing experience and would rely more on the app to manage their day.
In the End my aim was to organize my colleagues work life but I ended up creating a unique app that targeted the users time management issues and behaved more like a virtual assistant and can be used by anyone who has a hard time managing themselves everyday be it professional or personal.
