TIMID!
Project Year: 2021
Role: UI/UX & Visual Designer
Platform: Mobile App
Timid is a productivity app focused on helping users keep track of their events, notes, and reminders. The app uses calendars, documents, and sticky notes to help users boost their productivity in a way that suits their specific needs.
Students can often feel overwhelmed with the number of events, meetings, and projects they have to get done. Because most calendar apps today only allow users to keep track of deadlines, this can limit their ability to stay fully productive.
The goal of this project was to develop a productivity app that would remain as customizable and functional as a physical planner, while keeping designs grounded and realistic enough for users to easily adapt to using.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
RESEARCH TIMELINE
1. Competitive Analysis:
Understand existing rivals and see what they excel at best
2. Case Studies:
Understand the needs and frustrations existing in the market
3. Key Themes:
Synthesize findings to refine and develop “how might we” statement
USER RESEARCH
I first collected data by sending out a survey that received 12 responses. The survey showed that most people opted to use calendar apps to stay productive, with physical planners second in popularity.
I then interviewed 5 different students about their experiences using apps or planners to remain productive. This research was focused on gathering an extensive list of each method’s strengths and pains. After I gathered this data, I mapped them out into a “We Need” chart to better visualize and empathize with my user needs.
I was able to map common user needs and frustrations around two key themes:
Clarity. Users felt certain apps held visual clutter in their design that inhibited their ability to keep track of their events and assignments—a problem, particularly found on screens with dense content, such as list views.
Customizability. All users interviewed expressed a high desire for customization and user freedom within calendar and note-taking apps—particularly towards systems like tags, calendars, and more.
COMPETITIVE AUDIT
What can we leverage against our competitors?
I then continued research by conducting a competitor analysis, listing strengths, weaknesses, and gaps within each existing product. I then gathered my findings to refine my problem statement, ultimately defining the core functionalities of my product.
Problem Statement:
How might we create a productivity app for users who struggle with cognitive overload and anxiety?
IDEATION + SKETCHES
By analyzing both my user data and market data, I was able to come up with my feature list, and went into wireframing. Here, I focused on how each functionality would weave into one another to create one, cohesive productivity app.
Then I went into usability tests, and ran into a problem.
Once I had conducted usability tests with my low-fidelity prototypes, users didn’t seem to resonate with widgets—a core functionality within the app—as much as I had hoped. Widgets, as a design solution, screams “customizable”, which is what users claimed they wanted from a productivity app… so why aren’t users flocking toward the concept?
Upon further thinking and brainstorming, this was my conclusion:
Users who held “customizability” as a key need in their user experience, weren’t looking for the ability to build their user flows and dashboard from scratch. They were looking to have freedom in the way they interacted with the app! This, coupled with the fact that the dashboard just didn’t seem to be working out, I decided to scrap the concept entirely.
Pictured: Kairi’s brain relentlessly scrambling to figure out the true meaning of “customizability” users truly desired. Fueled by coffee and Nintendo OSTs playing in the background on repeat.
Pictured: Low fidelity wireframes used for a first round of usability tests. You can see some screens and tools planned for my widgets page that were scrapped! RIP, Pomo-timer…
REDEFINING “CUSTOMIZABILITY”
During my interviews, I recounted that users who preferred physical planners, enjoyed using blank spaces inside to jot down random notes, reminders, and doodles. The idea of accommodating space for people to throw out random short-term notes that they can refer to. To emulate this, I settled on the idea of a sticky note page, a place to jot down small notes, doodles, and more. Noticing that such a feature didn’t exist on competing apps, I ran with the idea for the app’s focus on “customizability”.
There are productivity apps that are made to keep track of events, and note-taking apps to write down notes and lists… what about users who need to keep track of small thoughts or reminders? This was what users ultimately meant when they valued “freedom” and “customizability”.
FINAL DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
Fluidity via bidirectionality!
For seamless navigation, I wanted to provide multiple touchpoints for users to traverse the app. Whether it be through the bottom app bar, hamburger menu, or calendar menu, users can develop habits that work best for them.
To further this, I designed calendars, notes, and tags to be accessible through the hamburger menu, allowing for quick and easy access across the app’s interface.
Having moved into the final stage of my design process—I decided to keep three important things in mind when designing for my app. These focuses were heavily influenced by user research conducted, hoping to accommodate for needs expressed during the interview process.
Emphasizing Clarity
Through user research, many users exclaimed that list views currently found on calendar apps felt overwhelming to navigate, with no clear end or rest to their list of assignments and events.
To help reduce cognitive overload, I decided accordions would be minimized at default, only displaying tasks for the day upon opening. This helps users parse through their tasks and events at their own pace, in a way that’s much more readable.
Short-term, scrappable notes
An important finding came from users who used physical planners, for the ability to jot down notes unrelated to their schedule and events. Whether it be random reminders, doodles, or thoughts, this was an important level of personalization that most calendar and productivity apps don’t exactly accommodate for.
Here, we can let users have the freedom of writing down anything that might be on their minds. I tried to further its identity as a space for short-term, scrappable notes by providing several touchpoints for note deletion.
REFLECTION
This project ended up taking much more work than I had anticipated! If I had more time, I would like to dedicate time to developing Timid’s design systems. I would also like to conduct usability tests to see the rate of adoption for the app’s sticky note function.