Class Activities

First Class Activity - Create a New Year Resolution Application

The task given to us in class was to interview a fellow classmate about their new year resolution and create an application to solve their problem on paper.

Interview Process

Interview Questions

The questions for the interview were shared with the student by the professor, here I added a few follow up questions based on the users on my own. This helped me understand their pain points better as well as learn more about their thoughts to make the idea better at solving their problem. The questions asked and the answers to them were:

1. What is your new year's resolution?

   "Consistent in fitness and in career goals."

2. What does success look like to you when it comes to this resolution?

   "Achieving my milestone."
   This is where a follow up question was asked about milestones, are small milestones better? and is it better to document them?

3. "Short term goals are better and documenting helps but it is hard to keep up with doing it consistently."

4. What are some challenges you might face as your try to achieve this goal?

   "Time management and taking too much on my plate on a busy day."

5. What might you measure to determine progress you've made towards this goal?

   "Hit small goals."

   This was followed up with a question about these small goals on how small should these goals be, what is their most common timeframe for most of their goals?

   "Daily goals are good to follow, having the option to see goals over the past week is a good option to have."

6. What are some major milestones along the way to achieving this goal?

   "Yes, person time management."

   Based on more questions it was learned in this part that the user has issues with laziness, procrastination and some days keeping a good mental health due to not having a social touch.

7. Have you tried to achieve this goal in the past? What helped or hindered your progress in the past?

   "Yes, but I stopped after a few weeks. It is hard for me to gauge which day is busy for me and I tend to overwhelm myself."

8. What are your major motivations for pursuing this goal? When you're feeling low on energy or unmotivated or are struggling for whatever reason, what keeps you going?

   "Music helps me relax and going my hobbies helps me distract myself from the pressure at times. Also having a social proof of other doing well is a major motivation source for me."

9. Do you like applications with a social side?

   "Yes"

10. What are some applications you use or like the most? What do you like about them?

    "Spotify, Whatsapp and Gmail. They stay true to their goals and have a good balance of design with fluidity, no ads in the interface is a big plus for me."

Interview Notes

Ideation Planning

Features

Based on the interview certain points were pulled out to be converted into a story board, the points were divided into two types:

1. General Features

   These were features which mentioned as general habits the users has from other applications, these were considered as already developed habits of the user. The plan was to keep these similar to the current applications but making sure they are not missed out on in the application. These included:

   1. Short term goal setting

   2. Day wise with an option to see old progress

   3. Reminders

2. Standout Features

   These were features which were mentioned multiple times as issues the user has from the current system they use, these were also certain pain points which user mentioned with solutions on how they solve it in their day to day life.

   1. Understand when day can be busy

   2. Look at others accomplish their goals (social media influencers as well as friends)

   3. When active in a task listening their own focus music

   4. Praise from friends

Storyboard

Based on the above mentioned features a storyboard was created to see how the user would be able to fit the application in their daily routing while marking on the features that they could be using.

Design

Based on the ideation the low level prototyping screens where made to highlight the features as well as problems solved.

1. Tasks Page

This was the page for their instant use keeping it simple to add a task and also show their tasks for the day. As highlight by the user about not understanding their day schedule a section was added on top to tell them in human way if their was busy or not, guiding them to take it slow if needed.

Another thing which was added as messages to motivate the user on each task telling them if they did it before or congratulating them if they had done that task today.

2. Task Active Page

User mentioned that they were needed music while doing some task so stay motivated hence the task active page was designed with a section to suggest them music based on their spotify or apple music accounts. While also showing them what their friends also completed during the day after they completed their task.

3. Feed Page

A page was specifically created keeping in mind the user liked social aspects to their applications and mentioned that they stay motivated seeing their friends or celebrities having some accomplishment.

This page also had the option of praising a friend on completing a task, here is an example on how I imagined the praise would be shared.

Things learned in this activity

1. What users feel and what they say is completely different sometimes as an interviewee you have to prod them in the direction for them to give answers.

2. Take quick notes as breaking the flow of questions and answers can confuse the user.

3. Users give ideas at times take a note of what they say and mark out things they say multiple times to figure out the main pain points.