Designing a productivity app: a UX case study

Helping your life goals through sprints; your personal productivity app.

Outlining the problem

A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing with a friend about the productivity tools we use at our workplaces. We both use different tools; he uses Jira, I use Basecamp, for tracking the goals and metrics of our teams. I started thinking about how these tools are very effective for collaborating but we don't have a perfect go-to place for managing our personal projects. Most of us still prefer the classic to-do lists on paper but we don't have an app or a tool for our personal projects outside of work. I started to think and talk to people if they face a similar problem and whether they would like to have an app to track their personal projects.

The challenge

People need an easy to use, the go-to app for managing and keeping a track of their personal projects.

Proposed Solution

1. To design a product that helps users to set their goals, check their progress, and manage their tasks.
2. To design a product that improves the experience of task setting and keeping a track of progress.

Design Process

Design Thinking Process

Empathize: Getting to know the users

“Design empathy is an approach that draws upon people’s real-world experiences to address modern challenges. When companies allow a deep emotional understanding of people’s needs to inspire them — and transform their work, their teams, and even their organization at large — they unlock the creative capacity for innovation.”
— Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard from IDEO, 2014

To get to know my users and support my hypothesis, I conducted qualitative user research in the form of a survey and collected results from 15 working professionals.

Overall, most of them use a productivity tool at work and reported a desire for a personal productivity app where they could collab with other people, add subtasks, and can use the app on their phones. Here are some insights I received-

Getting to know my users

I preferred qualitative over quantitative research to get to know the pain points of my users. I asked them what problems they are facing with the current app or tool they use at work, why do they prefer using a mobile app over a web app, whether they put their social events on their calendars and if they would like to use a personal productivity tool. This helped me to understand “what” people feel, “why” people use productivity apps, and how I can make their user experience better with my product.

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Here are some direct quotes from the users-

Define: Who am I designing this for?

After I got the insight from my users, my goal was to define a meaningful and actionable problem statement. From my user research, I determined the following factors that are important for my users with this product, as well as their pain points.

1. They need an app/tool which does not have a complicated interface and is easy to navigate.
2. While setting up a task on a mobile app, most of them don’t have the option of collaborating with other users on the same task.
3. Most of the apps give the users an option of setting tasks, but they are not able to track their progress on the tasks.
4. When the users are collaborating on a project together, I wanted to include a feature of posting an update or commenting on the tasks which makes the experience of my users even better.

As Jesse James Garrett said:

“Having faces of users surrounding us while we design for them effects how we solve problems.”

Personas

Based on my research, I created my user persona, Elina. I felt by empathizing with Elina’s frustrations and goals with the product would help me create a desirable experience for her and other potential users.

Ideate

Before I started wireframing and prototyping, it was important for me to revisit my research synthesis for a few reasons-

1. Identify my user’s current state and goal state.
2. To step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential of my solution.

My ideation process was driven by sketching the user flow of the app so that I don’t end up overwhelming my users with too many features.

Prototype

Prototyping is my favorite part of the design thinking process. I started by writing out each step of the flow and onboarding process.

Low Fidelity Prototype

Onboarding flow

Mid Fidelity Prototype

Having worked out the rough layout of my product, I started working on a digital prototype to get into more detail in preparation for the user test.

• Having all elements digitally laid out, I connected the frames to establish the flow of the website after which it was ready to be tested.

High Fidelity Prototype

After completing the mid-fidelity prototype, adding details was my next goal. I wanted the interface to be as simple and easy to use.

Viewing tasks

After the home page, I wanted the calendar to be very simple. I added the drag and drop feature of the unscheduled events to make the experience of my users better.

Calendar page

Adding task flow

Reflections

My key takeaway from this project was always being open to feedback. I missed so many small details in this first iteration of prototyping and I still have a long way to go to make the prototype perfect. I am currently working on the second iteration.

If you were even slightly entertained by this post, please consider showing some love by 👏👏👏 or sharing it on your favorite social platform. Bonus points if you can spare any advice for this UX newbie in the comment section below! I am here to learn and I would love your honest feedback.

I am looking for my first job/internship in UI/UX. If you have any opportunities for me, connect with me at shrutichaturvedi98@gmail.com.

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