Welcome to our.ly
our.ly is a mobile app that lets users manage their time using social components. Users can plan their
time for social interactions and manage their school/work schedules and be accountable with their peers. our.ly is focused on users being able to balance out their "work life" and responsibilities along with being
able to spend time with their friends and family.
Project Brief l Challenge
2 week sprint
For this concept project we were assigned to identify and solve for a problem we are passionate about: something that affected our lives or cared about. Our team focused on an issue that all of us agreed was
one of the hardest things to do: maintain balance in a continuously demanding world. We thought that helping to solve this issue would touch upon the lives of everyday people and that we could help resolve
many frustrations.
Project Goals:
1) Hypothesize, research and identify users' painpoints with time management
2) Develop a way to help resolve time management issues in a more delightful way
3) Design, test and iterate our app into a shippable product and then present to our internal stakeholders
Discovery
Although everyone in our group could relate to this problem area of time management, we needed to
know how others felt about it and also how they tried to manage their time. What were their methods?
What worked or did not? What were their current strategies? What was the competitive landscape?
- Competitive Comparative Analysis -
Our team needed to study the existing world of time scheduling apps. Which ones were popular? Which had our users had success with or not? And what did
or did not they like about them?
When it came to understanding comparitors, we wanted to learn what
they appreciated about the app(s),
how they felt about their features.
What we learned from studying competitors and comparitors:
Competitors
1) Competing apps used a color or a check off system that allowed
users to see which tasks they completed and which ones were still due.
2) Some apps such as Habitica and Bounty Tasker "gamified" tasks to
compete against themselves or other members of the app.
3) Alarms and notifications could easily be tailored to ones needs
Comparitors
1) My Fitness Pal tracks diet and exercise with gamification as a motivating
factor - you can track how other community members are doing.
There is also a community forum for Q&A and support
2) Moodnotes allows you to record feelings at certain times of the day and
allows the user to track trends of emotions. For example a user may record
they are irritated at exactly 3PM every weekday - which could correspond
to rush hour traffic.
Stand alone organizers
1) Easily synced with other apps.
For example: Google calendar with google maps, gmail etc.
2) Alarms and notifications could easily be tailored to ones needs
- Screener Surveys -
The next step into research and discovery was to send out screener surveys to identify
the following type of interviewees:
• People who had used a time management/productivity app in the past and in present.
• People who on average were extremely busy during their work week and weekends.
• A mix of people that needed help in time management and ones who were extremely organized.
We hypothesized that a good mix of the two would give us insights:
- From respondents who needed help we wanted to learn what did not work
(with current or past apps). We wanted to know how we could possibly help them.
- From respondents that were on top of their schedule, we wanted to learn what or how
they used (current or past apps) to make their life easier. What were their motivators?
- User Interviews -
Out of 29 respondents, we interviewed 12 Users:
8
females
4
males
Ages 18-42
Key Takeaways & Insights
1.
User interviews indicated that when it comes to prioritizing their lifestyle, all of them cited that put work first before anything else. Then came family and personal errands. The biggest pain point we found was all of our interviewees struggled with their social life - being able to hang out with friends.
Work and social life were definitely at opposing ends of the spectrum.
Work
"Keeping the needle in the middle"
Being able to keep the ideal balance was a constant struggle
Social
"The annoying thing is, the older you get,
the more in advance you have to plan for get togethers"
2.
“(I look forward to) Activities with my husband or a friend. A dinner out, or live music.
Or even a trip for an ice cream cone. Something to make the day special.”
Procrastination and over scheduling were the next big pain points. What users found motivating to alleviate this was: being able to spend time with family and hopefully with friends.
3.
All of our user’s had either used a mobile app in the past or currently were still using it.
The most popular platform was the iPhone-iOS. Nearly all (10 out of 12) of our interviewees
had an iPhone, in addition, 65.5% of our 29 survey respondents carried one as well.
Most popular scheduling apps were: Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Apple Reminder,
What they appreciated the most about these apps were:
+
+
Calendar Reminders Notes
+
+
Calendar Gmail Maps
1) Ability to organize tasks by color and task type
2) Instead of having a due date, having a timer
so you can start and stop a task
3) Synchronization of apps, for example:
Apple calendar and Apple Reminders & Notes
or Google calendar, G-Mail & Google Maps
"We use Google Calendar
for everything. Because everything
is in the Google eco-sphere"
Synthesis
- Affinity Mapping -
Although we identified many insights, we used Affinity Mapping to identify additional trends/patterns.
The following are "I" Statements we categorized:
- Personas & Journey Map-
With these insights in mind, we created a User Persona to identify our target audience and solve for their needs. In addition, we created a Journey Map and Problem Statement.
Avery's problem statement:
Avery needs a way to schedule her time in a proactive way to help her stop procrastinating and take back control of her life.
How can we help Avery with the motivation needed to keep her on track and productive? How can we help her to maintain the activities she loves?
Design
- Studio/Brainstorming -
To kick off our design, we held multiple rounds of design studio - or brainstorming sessions. Each round was 15 minutes long for ideation, and 5 minutes were given to each member to explain their ideas.
Each round was focused on solving for our Persona's pain points, branding concepts including names for the app. After several rounds, we had a lot of features that needed to be pared down.
– MoSCoW Method –
We needed to keep in mind our time constraint of a 2 week sprint. This is where we utilized the MoSCoW Method to prioritize our features and pare down to essentials.
SHOULD
MUST
-
Home screen/social garden
-
Symbol indicator of different task categories
-
Back log of low priority tasks
-
Words of affirmation
-
Break up of tasks
into days
-
Prioritize categories
-
Tags for tasks
-
Tab bar
-
Notification frequency
-
Due dates, warnings for tasks
-
Create personal & group tasks
-
Task estimator
-
Transit time buffer
WON'T
COULD
-
Outside rewards program
-
Tetris style game
-
Personal text messaging
-
Ice Block/Garden Sculpture
-
"Tank" for free time
-
Blinking lights for casino effect of accomplishment
-
Radial style "new task" button
-
Smart watch companion
– Paper Wireframes –
Home screen TOP
Home screen BOTTOM
Home screen would have daily tasks, followed by their social feed. At the bottom would be their “social garden”
Splash page
Activity pie chart
Profile page
Users would be able to view
their priorities, progress and
edit preferences
& profile information
Transit buffer
preferences
User’s would be able to
toggle between the two
Monthly
Calendar view
Daily
Calendar view
Task details
User’s would be able to create
or edit a task from anywhere
on the app.
Task list
Create a Task button
App Settings
(under Profile Page)
Final Prototype - Video
– Mid Fi Wireframes –
1st Iteration
Usability Testing
2nd Iteration
3rd Iteration
Final Prototype - Wireframes
Splash Page
Home View
Friends View
Calendar View
Calendar View + Fab Button is used to create a new task or event
Profile View
Next Steps
1. Look into other devices such as Apple Watch (for fitness purposes)
or an tablet/iPAD version to emulate traditional planners - DayPlanner
2. Partner with Fitbit to build up physical fitness/wellness component.
3. Another possible next step could be to tailor the app for the workplace: work with HR departments
to find workers needs and companies' IT departments to realize security concerns.
For example there are many B2B enterprise systems that are used in the workplace and for
consumer (peer-to-peer) uses such as: Slack, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Facetime.
