Overview
Try the prototype
Task-o-mize is an innovative scheduling app designed to enhance work-life balance and mental well-being. It integrates seamlessly with college schedules, offering customizable lunch and mental health breaks. It optimizes schedules by considering commute times and user preferences, fostering productivity and reducing stress.
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App Features:
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Seamless Integration: Task-o-mize connects effortlessly with existing college schedules, ensuring that users can manage their academic and personal lives in one place.
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Customizable Breaks: Users can personalize their schedules by incorporating lunch and mental health breaks, which are essential for maintaining focus and reducing stress.
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Commute Optimization: The app takes into account commute times and user preferences, optimizing schedules to foster productivity while minimizing stress.
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Purpose:
The primary aim of Task-o-mize is to promote a healthier work-life balance among college students by facilitating effective time management. By prioritizing mental health and well-being, the app helps users manage their academic responsibilities while ensuring they take necessary breaks, ultimately fostering a more productive and less stressful college experience.
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Team: 2 members
Duration: 8 weeks
My Role: User Research, UX Design, UI Design, Prototyping & Usability testing
My Tools: Figma
Research
User Persona
Meet Emma, she is a ambitious post-grad student seeking balance in a busy world
Problem statement
Emma, a student
(User persona)
needs
a time-management tool to help manage their schedule while maintaining good eating habits and keeping them rejuvenated
(User needs)
because
they struggle to balance academic schedules and self-care priorities
(Insights)
Empathy maps
The empathy map is developed from a series of interviews. We crafted a series of open-ended questions and conducted four in-depth interviews. Our target participants were individuals aged 19-27.
Competitor analysis
We identified products that were similar to our app to be considered competitors
A task management app focused on to-do lists and project organization.
A productivity app offering task management, habit tracking, and basic scheduling.
A visual collaboration tool using boards, lists, and cards for project management.
Task-o-mize stands out by specifically targeting college students like Emma. Unlike general productivity apps, it integrates academic schedules, work shifts, and personal activities, while offering commute optimization and customizable breaks. This tailored approach helps students balance their complex lives, addressing unique scheduling challenges and promoting overall well-being.
Ideation
How might we...
We identified problems and framed them as opportunities to help us move forward towards our solution. We wrote large amount of HMW's and voted to narrow down the ones most important.
HMW empower users to easily customize lunch and mental health breaks based on their preferences and needs?
HMW ensure these breaks are optimally scheduled without compromising productivity?
HMW create schedules that prioritize work-life balance by considering commute times and other external factors?
HMW we design as a holistic support tool that meets both scheduling and mental well-being needs?
HMW integrate features seamlessly to provide a unified user experience without overwhelming users?
Assumption mapping
We carefully considered our assumptions, prioritizing the most critical one for testing by mapping them according to risk and the clarity of their potential outcomes.
Hypothesis statement
Based off our most important assumption, we curated the hypothesis and sub-hypothesis to test through our prototype.
We believe that
by providing a comprehensive scheduling app that integrates academic, work, and personal activities with customizable breaks and reminders, we will help college students like Emma improve their time management skills and reduce stress.
Action
We will know this to be true
when we see an increase in completed tasks, consistent break-taking habits, and higher reported levels of work-life balance among our users.
Outcome
Sub-hypothesis statement
We believe that
offering intelligent schedule optimization based on commute times and user preferences will lead to more efficient use of time.
Action
We will know this to be true
when we observe a decrease in scheduling conflicts and an increase in productive study hours reported by our users.
Outcome
Design
Low fidelity
I created a low fidelity prototype as a crucial foundation for our high fidelity prototype. I designed wireframes to outline the basic structure and layout of the application, emphasizing core functionality and user flow. These simple sketches allowed us to visualize the main features and interface elements without getting caught up in visual details.
High fidelity
The mockups illustrate the onboarding process, collecting data on schedules and preferred breaks for optimized planning. They showcase the resulting optimized schedules, achievement statistics for tasks and mental health breaks, and notification systems to keep users on track with their commitments and well-being goals.
Usability testing
After creating a working prototype, we conducted 2 rounds of user testing with 5 users each round. The high fidelity prototype was created based on the user feedback and the conclusions we drew from the observations.
Areas we improved on:
Priority Feature Redundancy
Since they are students, all the projects hold the same level of importance.
Commute Considerations
Users mentioned the need to account for commute time to and from school/college
Inflexible Study Hours
Students noted that their study time varies based on workload and deadlines
Insights
What worked well
• Regular check-ins and open communication helped us stay aligned on project goals and progress.
• Creating low-fidelity wireframes before diving into high-fidelity prototypes saved us time and efforts.
What didn't work
• We initially underestimated the time required for creating detailed wireframes, which led to some rushed work towards the end.
• Our communication wasn't always consistent, resulting in occasional misunderstandings about design decisions.
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What's Next?
• Refine our project management approach to better allocate time and resources.
• Conduct more user testing to gather additional feedback on our prototype.
• Explore integrating gamification elements to enhance user engagement and motivation.
• Expanding the app's functionality to include features like reminders.
