‘95’ a fun way to manage your day
This case study outlines the process I went through during week one as a student at RED Academy. I worked with a fellow student to achieve a goal of helping him address his time management issue.
The Beginning
When client Kevin Jean-Baptiste approached me, he was struggling with balancing his work and social life. It was a design sprint as I only had four days to come up with a solution. Over the next couple of days i would dive into coming up with a plan that would help Kevin engage with using a category of app that had a stigma of being boring, the “dreaded time management utility.”
Ineffective time management takes on many forms, procastination, personal distractions, or projects that take more time than they should, there are tons of different things that waste our time every day. Wasted time means rushed deadlines, a work-life imbalance, and more stress and anxiety.
The Research
In order to address Kevin’s problems and help him win back hours of the day, it was time for him to ditch his phones calendar. I researched similiar looking apps that currently exist to understand the key features that are important and also the key features that are often ignored.
Some powerful apps that would directly compete with ‘95’ are, Timeley, Google Now and Pocket. After coming up with what seemed to be a simple user flow, the usability testing proved different. I received extremely positive feedback with a large volume of feedback. Tips from button placement to incoporating an avatar.
Building the design
In alignment with my research, the app had to be fun to use. I included an avatar component that would allow you to collect badges and build up your character based on the number of tasks you complete in a day. The overall design’s goal is intuitive and uncluttered, sporting a simple navigation bar and easy to read menus.
Features:
The mood of your avatar can change depending on the outstanding tasks. If Kevin falls behind on tasks, he will notice his avatar will appear to look sad. The more tasks he knocks out the park, the happier his virtual character appears.
’95’ is goal based and encourages users to manage their time in order to achieve new badges and gear.
Notifications of tasks to be completed: Kevin will get a notification of the pending task at hand. ’95’ will figure out how long it will take for him to get caught up.
Prototype of the low fidelity app:
The end
It was quite the experience problem solving for a fellow classmate. ‘95’ provided me with the challenge of designing an app that could help someone engage in a task like time management and turn it into a game. The fact we could wade through the very populated time management app field, and still come up with an idea that now seems engaging and fun to use was a big accomplishment.
