FOCUS is a daily planner and time management application that allows you to shut off other distracting applications during your most important meetings, appointments and tasks, keeping you focused and on point.
Millennials are struggling to adapt to the professional world of being on task, nine-to-five grinds, and due dates. While at work and in social settings, we are mindlessly scrolling and double tapping, and wonder why we struggle communicating, and why our co-workers don't respect us? It's perplexing that we have these incredible mobile devices constantly attached to us that are meant to help us be more productive and efficent, yet we are struggling to stay focused during class, at work and in conversation.
I wanted to come up with an app that would solve this time management issue.
that would help myself and millenials win and succeed every hour of the day.
Main Objectives
Understand people's current social media habits and what they do to keep a daily schedule.
Understand whether they look for digital tools to help modify or stay accountable of their use social media use and daily scheduling.
Determine if social media is affecting their time and task management skills negatively. Does it shape the users social behavior for good or bad?
Research
Tackling these main objectives would begin by validating any assumptions I had about people's social media habits and gathering as much information as possible. To do this I created a questionaire, then conducted interviews with individuals that fit into my user segment.
Interviewing eight seperate individuals, I was able to find many user's of social media, admit that their overuse of social media tends to get in the way of important tasks throughout the day.
Some users saying that they estimated time on social media apps throughout the day could be a combined total of up to 1 to 4 hours in a day. That is one to four hours you could spend accomplishing tasks, working on personal goals and improving your life.
One interviewee said the following about the time zapping process of distraction that she is having with her social media use:
Listen to an introduction to one of the Interviews.
"Honestly i’d say i’m on it, on and off, all day. . . you know there’s like five minutes or so that I will open them (apps) up and then just check what i’ve missed in the past five minutes, and then, close it - you know, go back to whatever i’m doing. I say that probably is around a couple of hours a day, atleast, when you add in that time altogether.” -Ashlyn
Many people are using Google Calendar, Reminders and the Notes app within their phone to currently stay accountable with tasks, but among the user's I interviewed, no one had an app that would track their time using social media.
The most common social media apps amoung my user segment were Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Other apps mentioned were Twitter, ESPN and their favorite various blogs and websites.
Personas
In order to keep me on point and focused on the needs of my user segment, I felt it was important
to create a persona based on my learnings from the interviews. This became very helpful as I would consistently "check in" with Austin, Elle and Blake, to make sure I was dialed in on their needs and staying true to user centered design.
Sketching
Brainstorming and sketching out key concepts and features was crucial in the low fidelity stage of Focus and any project i've worked on. You've got to start from somewhere, and rapidly prototyping with notecards and paper saved me time, rather than immediately beginning a project then having to go back and change a more high fidelity failed concept.
Below are a few very low fidelity sketches I used in brainstorming sessions while conceptualizing Focus.
Site Mapping
Site mapping this app was fairly straightforward. It was helpful to gather sketches, thoughts and ideas and be able to map them all into one diagram, deciding where one page would link to another on the app.
Wireframing
After going through the sketching and site mapping the app out, I began digging into Sketch and wireframing these various pages, keeping the concepts very low fidelity. I would often be sure to mirror these wireframes onto my phone to check for any usability, spacing and sizing issues. I also created a prototype in Marvel using these wireframes and would test the wireframes with roommates, friends and others that fit into my user segment to gain additional feedback and insight on the product.
User Interface Design
Because I wanted Focus to be a simple task managing tool that helped the user get the most out of their time, I felt the UI needed to follow suite and have a simple, clean and vibrant design and layout.
Animation
Wanting to see how someone would add a timeslot to their planner, I used Principle and Sketch to animate this mock up.
Prototype
Rapid prototyping this app, I used the prototyping tool Marvel. Click 'Play' below to test my prototype for FOCUS.
