akanksha mishra
Timely
Timely is a time management app for students and professionals to streamline their goals, achieve tasks efficiently and make the most out of their time.
Design Toolkit
Miro
Illustrator
Figma
Photoshop
Students and professionals often complain about not having enough time to complete their tasks and achieve extracurricular goals. This hinders their personal and professional growth and creates a burden to perform well despite not knowing how to manage time.
The Problem
The Goal
Timely is a Time management app which will let users manage their time by allowing them to set event schedules, log journals, view the community and participate in challenges. An important feature of the app is the goal journey map, which will allow users to log goals and break it down into smaller, achievable steps to reach their final goals.
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The success of the app will be measured through measuring user traffic and logging the number of goals completed by users on the app.
Design Process
I followed a step-wise design process to brainstorm the ideas, streamline the ideas into actionable solutions by ideating, storyboarding, prototyping, testing, iterating and refining.
Empathy
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Empathizing with the User
The first step I followed in the design process was to empathize with the Users to gain an insight into the user problem. For this, I created a research plan clearly stating the goals of the research and the questions and interviewed a pool of users (University students).
Research Takeaways
After conducting the interviews, I created empathy maps which made me understand the users better. I learnt that users usually struggle to balance work and play. They often fail to meet deadlines or get started right before the deadline and become anxious. They also fail to set goals for personal development and lack motivation due to not being able to get good outcomes in their personal and professional lives.
Pain Points
Wasting too much time on unnecessary tasks
Inability to set and achieve goals
Lack of motivation
Inadequate time management skills
Lack of time
Losing focus
Crafting User Personas
Observing and noting down the traits , frustrations, goals and motivations of the interview pool users, I came up with two personas to represent the target users.
Defining the Problem and Generating the Solution
After determining the user needs, frustrations, demands, goals and behaviors, I listed down the features that would solve the biggest pain points of the users and connected them to the user needs.
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INSIGHTFUL
TIME SAVING
GROWTH
Value Proposition
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Planning
Reminders
Organizing
Activity Log
Task prioritization
Goal Setting
Time tracking
Challenges
Community Motivation
Competitive Audit
The next step taken by me was to conduct a competitor analysis and find out what kind of existing products are already dominating the market.
Then I conducted a SWOT analysis comparing all the features of the products and their offering to their consumer base to find out opportunities which could be implemented in my app.
Key competitors
Time tune
Forest
Sectograph
Focus To-Do
Analysis
Time tune, sectograph and focus to do position themselves as time management apps using classic time management tools like to-do lists, scheduling, calendar and task setting.
Forest positions itself as an innovative app that leads to self improvement by encouraging users to complete their tasks and focus on their goals using a unique concept of growing trees for the amount of time spent away from the screen.
SW
OT
Strengths
Weakness
To-do lists, task setting, calendar, google events
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Most features behind paywall
Phone’s inbuilt focus app
Opportunities
Threats
More insightful features
More features for habit building
Financial constraints
Time constraints
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Storyboarding
To understand the steps a user might take while interacting with the app to achieve specific tasks, I created storyboards.
Setting an achievable Goal
Manish is worried about reaching his work targets
Manish finds out about the timely app
Manish downloads the app and navigates through its features
He uses the app to visit the Goals section of the app
He decides to add a new weekly goal to his account
He sets a goal and adds the milestones to achieve the goal.
Navigating to the Goals section on the app
Adding a new goal for the user account
Entering the goal details and adding the milestone time lines
Adding the goal and viewing it on the goal journey map
Marking the milestones as complete
Achieving the goal with the help of the small milestones
Wireframing
I further created wireframes to ideate different design possibilities.
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Information Architecture
Next, I came up with the possible menu options and the features under them.
WELCOME
SIGN UP / LOG IN
LANDING PAGE
HOME PAGE
TOP BAR
MENU
NOTIFICATIONS
PAGE
SCHEDULE
EVENTS
GOALS
BOTTOM BAR
TIME TRACK
GOAL JOURNEY
COMMUNITY
Open App
JOURNAL
User Flows
Scheduling a New Item After logging in
Welcome Screen
Log In
Landing Page
Proceed?
Y
N
Item Added
Enter ?
Y
N
Home Page
Add New
Item
Home Page
Adding a new To-Do list Item
Edit
Schedule
N
Open
To-Do
Y
Add
New?
Added
Adding a new Event
Home Page
Y
N
Events
Add?
Usability Study
Prototyping and Testing
Research goals: To determine whether the tasks can be completed efficiently within the app, without difficulty.
Methodology
Questions
KPIs
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Methodology
Unmoderated usability study (interview) -
Location: Remote, India
Date: 2/9/22 and 3/9/22
Length: Each session will last 5 to 10 minutes, based on a list of prompts -
Participants
University Students
Age : 18-22
3 Females, 3 males
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How long does it take for a user to schedule an item on the app?
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How easy or difficult is it to log a goal?
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How easy or difficult is the app to use?
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Are there any parts where the user flow gets stuck?
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Are there more features that the users would like to see in the app?
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Time on task
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Conversion Rate
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System usability scale
Card Sorting
Ease of Use
Participant could not find the edit reminders option.
Navigation
To-do lists should be more visible instead of being hidden away.
Features
Task prioritization feature is missing from the app.
Modifying designs based on insights
INSIGHT : Edit reminders option needs to be added to the app.
INSIGHT : icons must be clearly labeled to ensure accessibility for all users.
INSIGHT : features that are complementary to the existing features and make the app easier to use must be added to the app.
Feature 1 : Task prioritization
Feature 2 : Study with Friends
Design System
Colors
Closing Thoughts
The opportunity to build a platform that could help people make the most of their time has been a great challenge.
Through this project, I learned the importance of creating a user-friendly and accessible interface that could help people organize their schedules with ease, which allows users to manage their time more efficiently, freeing up more time to focus on their passions and priorities. I am confident that Timely will have a positive impact on people's lives.
