The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.
Marcel Proust, In Search of the Lost Time, Part One, Vol. II: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919)
The TIMEoh! App Story
When it comes to time management, very few people -if any- can claim mastering the skill. Modern era requirements, everyday obligations, heavy schedules along with last minute changes or unforeseen events sometimes make us wonder if we actually live our life, or we just run around in circles, trying to catch up in an endless effort to deliver on time.
As a no-free-time, long-hour-working mom who decided, age 45, to go “back to school”, to get a MSc degree, I already knew by experience that time is the most valuable -or, better, invaluable- asset: if you waste time you never get it back. So, when we first got into Miro in class, and professor Tsakarestou asked us to start forming an idea on a “white space” that would combine confronting an actual need with entrepreneurship and a media aspect, a time related thing crossed my mind without too much thought: after all, the things that most concern us tend to move in circles around our minds, until we decide to deal with them. TIMEoh! name popped up just like that, I wrote it down, but I had no idea what to do with it.
After all, how do you really deal with time?
When the Team (Jason, Ryad and Thanassis) saw what I had written (a plain word and a catchy motto, to be honest) -without much discussing about it, they started filling the gaps, actually addressing their own time related needs: “Since I started working, along with the lessons in the university, I seldom see my friends, I would really appreciate more time with them”, “I need to get away for a weekend with my girlfriend, but we both have busy schedules, we can’t seem to find common gaps in our program”, “It’s been ages since I last had dinner with all the family around the table”…
The White Space in Time Management
If one wonders what would be the global interest in yet another time management application or website, a check fact could be of use: a simple Google search for the terms “time management” adds up to a wowing total of 5,130,000,000 results, while “time management tips” run close to 4,260,000,000 results.
Currently on app store (both for iOS and android), one can find tens of time related apps, which offer management solutions to some extent. Their common ground is that most of them are theme-specific: for example, R&D logic specializes in corporations with an R&D department and offers solutions related to problems that may occur in the field, while Flat Tomato focuses on keeping the user away from distractions, thus making them indirectly more effective in time management: when you don’t lose time while doing things that need to be done, you free time in your schedule and life, for the things that you enjoy doing.
Yet, none of them -or, at least, none of the ones that we came across- would offer a comprehensive solution to time management, enabling interaction with other interested parties, and none would feature a more journalistic viewpoint, adding a fun-part, somewhat media (or even social media) — oriented to the mix.
This is exactly where the whole TIMEOh! idea is based.
The site
First things first, the Miro board! https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOdVhif8=/
On our first team meeting, we had to create a core for our idea, starting with the identification of our prospect users, the actual needs this app would try to cover and a first draft of the requirements to set it on track. Still, the most important aspect was people: who would be interested in downloading this app? What would their lives and lifestyle be like? How could this app effectively cover their needs?
Following professor Tsakarestou’s lead, the next step was to make this proposition more concrete, by adding existing alternatives, key metrics, even an evaluation of who we believed might be an early adopter of our project. Last but not least, we had to make this plan fully comprehensive, adding an estimation on our cost structure and the possible revenue streams: the best of ideas can end up in a trash can if not financially viable and self supported.
When we first presented our idea in class, we got all the positive feedback we needed to feel good about the project and continue, minus a tiny little detail: we were short in journalistic / media orientation. TIMEOh! was a good idea, an app that could potentially be useful to many… but with no media aspect to cover the basic requirement of the main task: entrepreneurship and journalism combined.
We discussed it as a team after class, and said that we would think about it in our next meeting, truth being told, with no solid idea on how to address the gap. And then, Ryad had an aha! moment.
TIMEOh! Cross Platform Media
Twitch is a social media platform launched in 2011. It is essentially a video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of e-sports competitions, music broadcasts, creative content, and “in real life” streams.
and
https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/about/
Twitch is not overly popular in Greece -to be honest, I had never heard of it, before Ryad mentioned it. Thankfully, Thanasis and Jason did, so they were all aligned with the idea, which they explained thoroughly: a time management app, giving media content to its users, and creating community interaction in real time.
We had a winner!
Moving from Personas to actual People
The next step was to take the idea out on the street: when we were discussing the needs TIMEOh! could cover and the people that would actually use it, it was much like doing an experiment in a lab: we had all our facts checked, but we could never be sure until we implemented our idea on real people.
Personal interviews were in order, and we had to make sure that we had all aspects covered: that’s why we conducted two different types of questionnaire, one for the potential users of the basic app…
and one for the media aspect.
In the making
When we had everything finalised on paper and in our heads, there came the time to actually create the website, the app and the social media. I created the texts, storyline and basic storytelling, along with the key social media accounts, on Facebook and Instagram…
https://www.instagram.com/timeohapp/
…Jason built the first draft of the website on Tilda…
…which was finetuned and finalised by Thanassis… https://tinyurl.com/2p9c2b74
…Thanassis also created the app on proto.io, which was a pretty challenging task…
… Ryad was -naturally- in charge of the media content, creating the podcast on anchor and the TIMEOh! Show on Twitch. As he mentioned after filming, it was “so cool to use the twitch program”, and a good chance to see his “future life as a streamer”!
https://www.twitch.tv/timeohshow
…and we were done!
The journey has ended -or just begun…
Reaching the end of this creative adventure, there are some interesting things we discovered that we believe are worth mentioning, the first one being a fact that was both a handicap and an advantage: TIMEOh! is an international team (Thanassis, Jason and myself are Greek, while Ryad is French), communicating in English, a language that is native to none of the four of us. As one might reasonably expect, the use of a foreign language, although not being entirely a barrier, prevented us from expressing ourselves, thoughts, ideas on a full scale, as we would all do, had we had the chance to create in our mother tongue. Communicating in a language other than your native is a difficult task, but, on the other hand, it forces you to be creative, more expressive, even more explicit at times, to get the message through.
This diversity also accounted for another successful step: the thought about using the Twitch. This platform, fairly popular in France, but not so much in Greece, was a medium very becoming to our TIMEOh! idea, but it would have never been used if Ryad hadn’t mention it and explain to us the way it works.
TIMEOh! is actually a great though on time management, which combines schedule building, interaction, activity sharing and basic media information. We don’t know if any of us would decide to move forward with it, turning it to an actual startup in the future. But there are two things that the four of us managed to realize as we were working as a team for this app:
That it is both far more complicated and much less difficult to get an idea running than one might expect, but following pioneers’ steps, learning from success stories and working passionately is always a good start.
And that team work is priceless.
Sincerely,
TIMEOh! Team
Ryad Kessab, Thanasis Papadopoulos, Jason Tsetsos, Charitomeni Vonta
Ryad KESSAB Thanasis Papadopoulos Tsetsosjason Charitomeni Vonta
