Redesigning the way we experience or interact with time
Time to do App
Organizing efficiently my time is key for success and life balance, but doesn’t have to be complicated: I should be able to use a system that adapts to my needs, rather than changing habits that I have spent years to build.
This article is about how the prototype, “Time to do”, was created for the Capstone Project as part of the Interaction Design Specialization through Coursera at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Link to presentation video: https://youtu.be/j41qFtbFLYU
Link to final prototype: https://marvelapp.com/1h51je3/screen/24376856
Needfinding
Daily schedules help us plan. They can encourage us to “fill” our days, or talk about being “free”. When we punch the clock, or bill hours, we turn time into money. These representations are human inventions. Most digital time representations — — clocks, daily and monthly calendars, … — — simply translate paper and gears into pixels and beeps. With the computation and sensing capabilities of mobile devices, can we find a more personal and joyful way to interact with time?
To discover the needs of an app such as this, I observed three individuals in their own environment.
Person #1: Jay is a busy engineer who works from home, from the headquarter office, and traveling to on-site customer calls. His priority is to stay focus on is family, and he makes sure he ends his professional day early enough to focus on his personal life. He uses letter size white paper and a basic pen to list, plan his time and prioritize his activities, tasks, and timelines. He isn’t willing to use computer or phone applications as scheduling tools, because he believes it would takes him more time to input information than pen and paper.
Jay is struggling when he forgets his list, as he can’t write during his call, he has to rely on people to send him an email to summary the call as a reminder
Person #2: Mary is a busy professional musician, she shares her time around 4 different activities: Teaching music, music edition, concert flutist and personal activities. To be efficient in all 4 areas, she compartmentalizes her time, and focus on one area at a time. She tried a lot of softwares, online planners and other time management tools, but was never happy with them because having her busy schedule in front of her was overwhelming.
At night, she sits and prepares her next day schedule on a paper list, when she doesn’t find a piece of paper, or if she thinks about it, she uses her basic text memo application on her phone. She uses that app to list tasks that she will not have the time to deal with in the following days, as a reminder. She doesn’t want or need to spend more than 10 minutes on it.
Her list helps her to plan activities that can fit in the day. What ever in on her list has to be done, she keeps it realistic.
Person #3: Jo is a young entrepreneur transitioning from traditional office work to managing full-time a start-up. He is also involved in his community; and spending quality time with his family his very important for him. He still does contract work to pay the bills.
His relationship with time and time management is drastically changing. He use to do office work 8 to 5pm, and now as business-owner, he his extremely busy with deadlines and new tasks constantly adding up to his schedule.
Online A/B Test
Experiment: Quick access to my to-do-list
My in-person testing data showed that all of the users had some difficulties to randomly access at anytime to their to-do-list. In real life, that would be a factor that could lead the user to stop using the app, because it’s slowing down users during daily activity. To test this, we will have two interfaces to A/B test.
Proposed interfaces
Changes made from prototype A iteration to prototype B iteration are not successfully improving the quick access to current list display. On prototype B, not only it took more clicks and more time to reach the current today list, but it also frustrated participants, as they felt they could not accomplish quickly a simple task. Their comments, the tone of their voice, and their fast hovering over nearly all icons clearly showed frustration and stress, as they believe they were not going to make it. Interestingly enough, on version B, they never hover over the direct access list icon (top right corner, as well as on the logo (which acts also as shortcut to home screen). They found navigation very intuitive on prototype A, their comments and voice tone showed enjoyment and fun while performing the requested task (“That was easy! I feel smart!”)
An other common finding on version A and B is the feedback about the look: Participants found it dull, outdated. They recommended to change it to uplifting look and colorful accent.
List of Potential Revisions
Look and Feel: While I am going to stick with a very muted look, I am going to change the fonts and the logo to bring more contemporary look. I may not change the color to something more trendy, as very sober look was chosen in line with the POV.
Home screen: I will add all the icons so users can directly see/access to all app features from home screen.
All pages header: I am removing the list button on the right corner, replacing it with a search button.
All page footer: I will stack all options at the bottom, and will move the direct access list back here (instead of the top right corner).
Logo: I will review logo design to a more modern look. I am also keeping it only on Home screen.
Conclusion
At the early stage of the project, I discovered that people are finding themselves overwhelmed with activities, chores, time management, deadline, and even with new technologies that are somewhat intrusive in their lives. My project “Time to do” fits well with the brief because the app is thought in a way to remove stress, by learning from the user, rather than the user learning the app. Overall, it’s like re-balancing the design, by focusing on simplicity and ease of use, exactly fitting my Point of view :“Organizing efficiently my time is key for success and life balance, but doesn’t have to be complicated: I should be able to use a system that adapts to my needs, rather than changing habits that I have spent years to build.”
