Design Process: Precrasti
The prototype for the Precrasti app has been made for the Capstone Project of the Interaction Design Specialization from Coursera and the University of California, San Diego.
The idea behind the app is to help people deal with procrastination so they can be more productive by not delaying pending work and not getting distracted while doing a task. The app lets you schedule tasks, disable distracting software, create four types of notifications and measure your productivity performance.
It’s design process had eight steps: needfinding, ideation, storyboarding, paper prototyping, heuristic evaluation, high fidelity prototyping, user testing, and the final prototype.
1. Needfinding
Two participants were involved: Ken, a 25 y/o graphic designer, was observed while performing a work session; and Lorena, a 27 y/o communications analyst, was asked to fill a journal during a day with pending work.
Observations showed that Ken gets distracted a lot by playing games and browsing websites on both his computer and his phone, boredom was the catalyst for him to start procrastinating; easy and instant access to those distractions facilitated the process. Also, Ken said he felt guilty while doing procrastination activities.
The journal filled by Lorena, revealed that she procrastinated six and a half hours that day before starting on her pending work, she said she was not feeling motivated enough to start the task and that she felt she had enough time left for completing the task before deadline. She also felt guilt while procrastinating.
2. Ideation
From all the ideas that came up at the brainstorming, these four tackled the findings better:
People need a way to add purpose to their tasks; the lack of it diminishes their motivation and commitment for completing those tasks.
People need to be able to act upon feeling guilt while procrastinating. Guilt is an alert from oneself that can be used to start or get back to pending work.
People need a way to avoid boredom as well as distractions, as they can lead to long procrastination sessions.
People need to be able to assess the scope and time needed for their tasks, and then schedule them. An innacurate prediction can lead to poor usage of time.
These four ideas shaped the Point of View that was used for the design of the app: Lack of purpose, easy access to distractions and poor asssessment of tasks keep people from being productive and completing their tasks on time.
3. Storyboarding
Storyboards were made to imagine ways an app could help satisfy the user needs previously found. These had three stages: the setting, where the context is given and the user need is shown; the sequence, where the app helps the user deal with the problem; and the satisfaction, where the end result is shown and the need is satisfied.
To help people assess their tasks, the app lets you schedule tasks with Start Dates and also Deadlines so the user is forced to calculate the estimated completion time for each task and so make a more accurate schedule. Also notifications are activated when the user is over the scheduled time to start a task.
To help people add purpose, the app lets your friends create a certain type of notifications where they can write encouragement messages; and also another type of notifications where the user can record himself/herself with the intention of reminding his/her purposes and mid/long-term goals for completing those tasks. This can act through the guilt of knowing that you are procrastinating when you are supposed to be working.
To help people avoid distractions, the app lets you create “Session Types” where you can select which PC software, phone apps and websites you want to disable when in a work session.
To help people cope with boredom, the app uses the pomodoro technique so your work sessions don’t feel long and tedious. For this, it has a configurable timer with the preset of 25 min for work sessions and 5 minutes for breaks. Also, this information is transformed into statistics so you can assess your performance.
Additionaly, the app gives you productivity related tips to help you gain knowledge on how to make a better use of the app.
4. Paper prototyping
With the ideas on how to satisfy the user needs, paper prototypes were made to perform a heuristic evaluation. Prototypes were detailed enough so users could interact with it.
5. Heuristic evaluation
Heuristic evaluations were conducted based on the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by Jakob Nielsen: one was performed online through the talkabout platform and the other was conducted in-person with a friend. Several usability problems were identified, and severity ratings from 1 to 5 were given. Here are three of the most important findings:
6. High-fidelity prototyping
With the feedback received on the heuristic evaluation, most of the screens were redesigned. This time the prototypes were made on Photoshop to ensure the high-fidelity needed for the final user testing.
7. User testing
For the final user testing, a protocol was made to help the tests be consistent. Two users were observed testing the interactive prototype made in InVision, while feedback about its usability was gathered. Also, a specific screen was redesigned to generate a B version of it; an A/B test was performed through the UserTesting online platform, where four participants tested the interactive prototypes of both versions and compared them in terms of usability.
8. Final Prototype
Redesigns were made with the data gathered through both the in-person testing and the online A/B testing. These are the final screens of the prototype:
An image version of the design process for the app can be found here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/48026537/Proceso-de-diseno-para-proyecto-final-de-Coursera
And the interactive InVision prototype can be tested here: https://invis.io/FZA7UTMBR#/216412842_01_Main
