Wish you “Good Timing” and not be late again 🤗
A Mobile App prototype built as a Capstone Project for Interaction Design Specialization by UCSD on Coursera.
Before we start
Early this year, I registered the MOOC on Coursera to acquire some fundamental knowledge on User-Centered Design. As one of the thousands who took/is still taking the course, I’ve learned about design thinking and some basic design principles (esp. for UX/information design), and tried to conduct a number of user researches throughout the learning process.
As an undergraduate majoring in psychology, by doing the project, I got the first chance to design for a brief instead of doing whatever I initiate or I think to be beneficial. And I regard the experience as a practice of UCD and designing for a core function. It’s a part of the final week’s assignment to write about the process I went through and publish it on Medium. I’m glad to review the 3-month journey and make a conclusion here. I hope there would be at least a little chance to resonate with my classmates around the world and bring about inspirations if there are for anyone.
Design Brief
The way people represent time changes how they think about it. Wall calendars remind us of years, seasons, and the dentist appointment 6 months in the future. They codify weeks by wrapping every seven days, and it’s easy to find the weekends — they are on the edges. Clocks help us coordinate with others. Historically, many countries’ citizens adopted pocket watches and clocks along with the railroad. Before the railroad, there was no need for precise time. 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?
The Mission: Redesign the way we experience or interact with time.
The Product
Feeling anxious when being hurry to arrive on time? Or boring when waiting for too long before an appointment?I found it common for some of my friends (including myself 😳) to be trapped in the dilemma, unwilling to set out too early but also fear of being late. Thus we experience the anxiety before departure from times to times. I believe it is also true for many others. So there is the App GoodTiming.
Time is sometimes wasted because of the uncertainty of various factors, such as weather, traffic and human conditions. However, with good scheduling, people will be less likely to be late for appointments or procrastinate and may achieve higher efficiency.
As a scheduling app for everyone, GoodTiming calculates the time to go with time, traffic, predicted time for preparation, event nature, etc.; and notify the user at appropriate time. The product also helps its users be free from calculating the time to go again and again before the appointments, and never being late.
The Design Process
Needfinding, Ideation & Wireframes
To design for the brief, I conducted semi-structured interviews with three people I know discursively around the topic of time and observed them doing what we talked about. Then, I was able to generate a list of user needs within a wide range, specifically in terms of recording past events and planning for the future.
Aided by the 16 user needs and some other inspirations, I chose to meet one of the needs by creating an App which help people to schedule better and avoid to be late for appointments or procrastinate. Upon the decision, two storyboards were drawn to display a different function respectively.
One of the functions was smart scheduling based on tasks attributes; the other one was calculating the time to go with time, traffic, predicted time for preparation, event nature, etc., which evolved to be the final product.
The two led to two different paper-based wireframe prototype. Thanks my friends and classmates for your heuristic evaluations. That helped me a lot with the many decisions.
Prototyping & User Testing
Eventually I made up my mind to adopt the idea of calculating the time to go before a scheduled event. Honestly I realized it was already a feature of Moleskine’s Timepage and Google Now also had a similar function: Timepage has an assistant which may tell you when to leave before a event based on the route, the travel method and a set amount of time before leaving; and Google Now can notify the time you should go for a flight.
I felt frustrated in the first place. Well, it happens every day when you thought you had some original ideas but soon find out it’s already implemented by someone else. Everyone has his/her ideas, but few can really make it a reality. I bought Timepage and searched for information about Google Now (unfortunately it has not been launched in China so far and would be replaced by the Assistant). I persisted for the idea, tried the “competitors”, learned from them and proposed to go deeper. I daydreamed that my App could remember and learn from its users’ habit, modeling and calculating appropriate time for notifications 🙊.
Going through from the simple Axure wireframes to a high-fidelity prototype with a real online user testing (by which I got to learn how difficult it was to enable the user to construe an interaction in the way as supposed), the product was iterated for several times and could finally be shown.
You may get access to the final prototype via this link. The prototype is not fully functional due to some restrictions of inVision.
Other words
- During the first time designing for a brief, I kinda experience what it is like to work in the real world setting. It was much more challenging than previous attempts for other design works when the team could do whatever we like. Not being able to negotiating with the “client”, I hope their requirement was at least partly met.
- I enjoy the process of concentrating on and polishing the core function of an App, only to solve one key problem. However, it is not what people need, at least for me myself. Even though people like neat simple software, they still hope GoodTiming can sync with Google Calendar (according to some feedback I gathered). It is also the truth at Apps are not fully usable when there are too many of them. And that’s why we have Siri, Google Assistant and other AIs to be the hubs for all the Apps and solve the problems of the excess of Apps. Although GoodTiming still needs refinement and polish, I will not work on it anymore. I also wish that there won’t be a real GoodTiming being materialized, but the feature may be well-integrated to some other services that are versatile and convenient to use.
- The whole specialization, especially the capstone project indeed requires hard work and abundant input if you’d like to. Half of it is truly fun; while for the other half, I did postpone and transfer classes for several times, struggling with it when I had exams to take and application to prepare. Fortunately I managed to persuade myself into it. I have to say that, though the courses do not as demanding as some others online, they are the only that I threw myself into, and the experience would be indelible.
Acknowledgement
- I’d like to show my gratitude to all the people who made the brilliant specialization, bringing us knowledge and practical experiences. I shall also thank my classmates, especially those who reviewed my assignments, providing constructive suggestions and/or appreciations to me, those who contributed to the forum and/or the Facebook group; and my friends, classmates and anonymous users online who provided useful feedback during user testings.
- Special thanks to all the people who made and released these awesome resources for free, without which I could not have finished my project: the prototype template by inVision; icons by Madebyoliver & Freepik on Flaticon; mockups templates from Smartmockups; and also the presentation template (for my assignments) by SlidesCarnival.
- Thanks to the course, I published the article as my first Medium post. :D
