I expected users to face challenges with scheduling tasks, including difficulties in time management, balancing work and personal commitments, setting achievable goals, feeling overwhelmed, and manually inputting tasks into their calendars causing them to not rely or use it often.

Proto Persona: June

June is a university student and a UI designer based in NYC. Because of their work/school/life schedule, they find it hard to balance all of their needs and feels like they’re falling behind.

Goals & Needs

• Learn how to have a healthy work-life balance to improve her quality of life, be less stress and happy!
• Needs a scheduling app that makes organization easier and more efficient

User Research

My team and I conducted 18 user interviews and sent out a survey that resulted in 14 responses.

Objectives

• Understand the user’s thoughts/feelings towards AI powered apps and the utilization of AI
• Understand the user’s pains and gains for current scheduling apps they’re using or have used
• Understand the user’s wants and needs for how to stay organized with the usage of apps

Survey Results

Through the survey results, my team and I found that users were familiar with AI. In addition, the majority utilized a digital calendar and felt that they would benefit from an AI-powered calendar. We also took note that many users prioritized spirituality in their life. Full results can be found here.

Affinity Diagram

Since we had a multitude of data to sort through, I decided to break up the categories by the interview questions and sorted it from there. As a result, we discovered that most people are really struggling with time management, meeting deadlines, staying active and with how they organize their work and need a better way to do so with less mental load.

After understanding what solution would bring the most value for my users, my team and I decided to take it a step further and brainstorm the ideas for the actual features.

Feature Prioritization

My team and I took some time to write down a few ideas we had for the app that aligned with our objectives. After we finished brainstorming, we begin to sort out the ideas. Using the feature prioritization matrix and the data we took from our research, we ended up with the following chart:

Ruby's User Flow

Following the decision of features, my team and I worked on the user flow. We knew the main features we wanted to focus on were: utilizing AI to add a task to the calendar, using AI to move missed tasks to another day, and adding a mood feature. Since these tasks required many steps, the project leader split up the user flow between team members. I helped created the task flow for signing up.

Low-Fi Prototype

After we had an idea of how our task flow would look like, my team and I drew 3 different sketches and collaborated together to mesh our ideas to create Aja.

Mid-Fi Prototype

Due to time constraint, we immediately went into Mid-Fi prototyping and testing. I conducted a 6 usuability testings and collectively as a team we had a total of 15 usability testings.

Through this we found that:

• Users could not locate add task
• Too much information
• Add task button too small

UI Style Guide

Before we could make the appropriate changes, my team and I created different versions of the app using colorings that we felt worked well together. After voting on the best color palette, we decided to go with the one I designed. I conducted color accessibility tests to ensure that everything was accessible for the users.

I learned how to work under pressure with this project. As stated, there was a time constraint which made it difficult for us to create a well polished project. Despite the issue, the team worked well together and communicated effectively. I also learned to be flexible and to tackle the issue one at a time to avoid being stressed out. Time management played a huge role in this project.

The future of Aja

I imagine that the app can grow to implement:

• Incorporate budgeting with an additional security measures in place
• Supplemental task creation
• An updated “My Months in Color” section that details the user’s moods
• Tablet interface