At the very beginning, I chosen to observe the way people interact with time. Most of people have experienced the hard time on time management. Some of them might already address this problem; others might still struggle to this issue. Like one of people I observed, when he had to meet someone on time, he was not aware of upcoming meeting time, distracted from his topmost priority.
Accordingly, my point of view about this issue is that users have to recognize deadline by some compulsory strategy which spur users to stick with their primary task. I’m inspired by a writing app, called the most dangerous writing app.
It offers an extreme and hardcore function enforcing users to do their works; otherwise, users would lost what they’ve already written. I learned ingenuity in this dangerous app: there is a real and practical outcome which affects users’ progress of task if users procrastinate or hesitate for a while, such as a punishment.
Implementing this core concept of punishment, I started from the first paper prototype which is a rough sketch, but catches this core concept.
Furthermore, I found one of factors triggering procrastination is how to arrange overwhelming task. Dividing task into smaller and manageable pieces might help people to be willing to face their task.
After paper prototype, this rough sketch should be examined under the heuristics evaluations. This evaluation is very helpful since it can help me eliminate where violation happens, like user control and freedom. I changed my scope from writing app into task management app, expanding its functionality as well. Since I thought that users don’t frequently edit their document on their mobile devices.
However, I had hard time establishing this core concept of punishment. Sometimes punishment is at the expense of users’ control and freedom. Therefore, this time I decided that this punishment should works on users’ property instead of usability. Like learner who spends money on Cousera will be more active to accomplish their course and earn their certificate. Users might spur themselves based on what they’ve paid.
After reinforcing this core concept, it’s time to dive into iteration stage. Even I invited only seven interviewees, they provided me with valuable feedback allowing me to polish this prototype. The most prominent drawback that I found during this procedure is that users usually got stuck on the buttons with too minimizing design. There should be more informative information on it helping users recognize its function directly. So I replaced most of icons and buttons into lexical icons. This is a very essential lesson teaching me how to keep balance between minimalist design and practical usability.
To sum up, the most remarkable difference between this app and schedule app is that it helps users spur themselves by an invisible reward and punishment system since users have to accomplish their task before deadline in order to get full refund. Otherwise, they can’t. Furthermore, it help users to divide their task into manageable subtasks, so that users will not feel overwhelmed and stressful.
This is my first time to conduct an real Ux related work in my life, such an unforgettable experience.