Designing Timely Daily — An App for Organizing Tasks
I’ve spent a significant part of the last 10 weeks building an app prototype that allows users to organize their daily tasks and get rewards as they do so. During this period, I went from need finding, ideation, multiple prototype iterations and heuristic evaluations. Here’s a breakdown of the journey from wireframes to final prototype.
The App & Features
At its core, Timely Daily simply allows a user to manage time by creating multiple tasks that they want to complete within a specific time frame. Once created, the user can monitor the status of each task and gain rewards based on the number of tasks successfully completed.
The Wireframes
After narrowing down the list of user needs and features, I had a better idea of how the app was going to be mapped out. From initial page layout to tab items, I was able to come up with the skeleton for Timely Daily.
Back to the Drawing Board
After wireframing and prototyping the first version of Timely Daily using tools like Photoshop and InVision, I shared my design with several users to understand what their user experience was like, in addition to likes and dislikes while interacting with the prototype. With this, I was able to get a sense of what needed to change from a design standpoint. I had other concerns I needed to address as well, like how each slide/page flowed from one to the next and how to make it easy for a user to get back to a previous section from one they were viewing currently.
Timely Daily Version 2.0, 3.0 Or Wait…4.0?
Ah..What do you call the final version of a prototype you’ve been working on for 10 weeks? I’ve struggled enough with this one so let’s just call it version x.
After going through several feedback sessions, and making design changes, I decided on a minimalist design for the final version of the prototype. I also cleaned up some flow issues from page to page and added two more pages to give the prototype more depth than it originally had.
Key Takeaways
Overall, it’s been an interesting design process filled with lots of learning outcomes. Designing and building any functional prototype takes a lot of time, iteration, research and creative thinking to make all the dots connect for the users.
