A task management tool that improves work-life balance.

LEGO-ToDo

Duration: 2022.10-2022.11
Role: UX Designer / Product Manager
Team member: Peter Huang, Krystal Liu, Sung Rok Kim

Problem space

Story of Isabelle, our persona:

Isabelle is a 21-year-old graduate student. She has a full semester schedule with a heavy study workload. As a TA, she also holds office hours and leads discussion sections. She is also actively looking for a full-time employment position. Isabelle has some internship experience, there were huge loads during the internship, but she gained a sense of accomplishment by completing all the tasks. Isabelle is comfortable using electronic devices, and to manage all the tasks she has, Isabelle uses Apple Calendar and Reminder on her computer. She likes using these tools because they can synchronize all the information on all her devices. 

In addition to the task management tools she uses, she also has a regret list. She uses it to record all the things she regrets doing and hopes the list can remind her not to make the same mistakes again. She believes that it helps her to become a better person. Isabelle is used to multitasking due to an overloaded amount of work. She currently prioritizes tasks related to academic work with deadlines more than anything else, but wishes to participate in non-academic activities, including social time with her friends, exercising, sports, etc. She generally lives a fast-paced life with busy schedules and feels stressed about her current plan. 

In terms of her life goals, Isabelle wants to achieve career success, but at the same time, she is trying to improve her work/life balance. She wants to embrace adventure and live an inspiring and passionate life. Although Isabelle enjoys a fast-paced and organized life, her end goal is to be able to do the things she likes. Unfortunately, over time she feels like a machine that focuses on finishing all the assigned tasks instead of doing what she wants. Currently, she realizes that she is unintentionally wasting a hefty amount of time on distractions such as YouTube, Instagram, lying in bed, etc. She wants to fix her habits to enhance the quality of her organized work time and make time for doing what she wants. 

To graduate with a good academic performance and be successful in her later career, she has always worked hard, prioritized her work, and kept her schedule organized. She successfully finishes the majority of her tasks by using her organized to-do list tools under pressure. At the same time, she tries to put extracurricular activities into her schedule so that she would not overwork herself and have time to relax and have fun. But because those activities are not deadline-driven, she often procrastinates and ends up not doing them as planned, which frustrates her and makes her feel that she has no personal life. 

To put it shortly…

Isabelle needs:

Spend less time on scheduling a task

A design that include non-academic/non-work related activities in a schedule

Visual improvements to make looking at deadlines less stressful for users

Isabelle is:

a student who are on campus and actively participating the following activities: 1) heavy study workload, 2) job seeking, 3) school club/association, 4) part-time job, 5) other time consuming habits.

Previously, our group has individually assessed the existing solutions that relate to our problem space. Based on the analysis of 20 existing solutions, the limitations were mainly divided into two categories:

  • 1. The solution requires too much work for task management

    By too much work, they mainly deal with having to manually keep track of their daily track(Mindkit, Fantastical), too long to start off with the task management system(Habitica, Screenzen), the solution being overly professional for our target audience(Dotetimer requires pre-statistic knowledge and Calendy is specifically for enterprises), or having to pay additional fee for scheduling tasks (Fantastical, TickTick). For the following category, they are usually intended to satisfy all the needs of various users and keep them entertained to use the solution consistently. However, it causes backfiring by having the app being too complicated to comprehend or initiate, because in the end, the solution mainly deals with just task scheduling.

  • 2. The solution is way too simple to satisfy the needs of our targeted user group

    On the other hand, when the solution is way too simple, it is when the solution serves a singular purpose (Bento, Focus Tomato, Forest), too general for our targeted users (Google calendar, Apple notes), or is lacking engagement (physical calendar, physical to-do lists). Simplicity can be an attractive factor to many audiences. For instance, some interviewees would prefer this factor as they find other scheduling tasks too time-consuming. However, it fails to incorporate all the needs listed in our group project, such as making a fruitful work-life balance and relieving mental pressure from schoolwork. When it comes to physical solutions, such as physical to-do lists or a calendar, it is often difficult to bring the physical solution all the time while users can integrate the information with digital platforms, which is vital to many people’s work nowadays. Moreover, it is very time-consuming to handwrite all the user’s schedule on a blank sheet of paper, thus containing both limitations listed above.

  • Conclusion

    From the analysis, we can imply that limitations are caused due to the solutions being overly dependent on either satisfying the needs (limitation 1) or simplicity (limitation 2). What we need is a perfect balance of both: it must satisfy the needs AND be simple.

Design selection process

We first asked each group member to share 5 of their favorite ideas. In the process of sharing, we found that we all want the final product to be more playable, that is, to allow the user to experience a more interesting way of product interaction. For example, we had ideas to design tasks as Lego blocks or musical notes and to design the process of completing a to-do list as the process of making coffee or hunting treasure. Attracting more users is one of our goals, but more importantly, we want our product to bring them happiness and release stress. 

After determining that we wanted to gamify our task management tool, we listed the pros and cons for each game's relevant design and analyzed whether they would work in a real-world design. We found that Lego was the optimal idea. After some short interviews, we noticed that Lego is a childhood memory for most of our target users. Using Lego ensures that users can quickly understand the rules of our game, easing their time in learning to use the product. Second, Lego is a great way to visualize the completed task and help users to engage with others in our community because users, as Lego lovers, can quickly share their Lego pieces and resonate with each other. We hope our product can bring a good community environment to users and promote everyone to improve together.

to better visualize our idea, we started sketching and brainstorming our ideas based on 4 tasks and scenario that best reflecting our persona’s need:

Task 01:

The first task for users is scheduling tasks into the to-do list, and receiving Lego bricks after completing the tasks as rewards. Since the end goal of our persona is to do things she likes, not just works she has to do, planning a balanced to-do list, and getting rewarded from finishing such a list, could greatly incentivize her to not only build more balanced to-do lists in the future, but also finish all the tasks, work and nonwork related, without prioritizing one task over the other unnecessarily. This cycle will ultimately lead to our persona doing more things she likes, and finishing her usual tasks at the time. Users can use our app to build their to-do list, and choose different colors for different tasks. Once a task is completed, users can check that task off the list, and receive a random Lego brick with the color corresponding to the color of the task. The bricks are stored in the user’s inventory, waiting for users to build Lego figures out of. 

Scenario 01:

Isabelle wakes up early this morning to plan her entire day out. She opens our app, and starts writing down the tasks she wants to finish today, including both work related tasks, like finishing her part of the group project, refining her resume, and having a meeting with the group, and life related tasks, like reading her favorite novel for an hour, and watch the sunset on the lawn in front of the McGraw tower. She gives each task a different color, so that she can easily distinguish them from one another. After finishing the to-do list, Isabelle starts her day and proceeds to finish her tasks. Every time she finishes a task on the list, Isabelle checks off that task, and the app prompts her with a notification that she receives a new Lego brick with the color corresponding to the color of the finished task. Because Isabelle has no idea what shape of Lego brick she is going to receive beforehand, she is pleasantly surprised that the newest brick in her collection is a 1*6 shape brick, which Isabelle has not received before. Motivated by the urge to acquire new and unique Lego bricks, Isabelle continues to finish her tasks with enthusiasm. At the end of the day, Isabelle feels both satisfied from completing all the tasks, work and nonwork related, she set out to do in the morning, and happy that she has some brand-new Lego bricks she can build her favorite figures from.  

Task 02:

To discourage users from prioritizing solely work-related tasks, users will receive additional rewards for completing randomly generated tasks that are connected to their WLB (work-life balance) goal. Subtasks include: 1. Users must choose a goal and assign a category to it in order for the app to create randomly selected tasks relating to that objective.) 2. The user can decide how often to receive such tasks (e.g. 5 times a week or 7 times a week). 3. A specially assigned task is given to the user on the top of their to-do-list. 4. The user completes the task and receives a reward (the reward remains unknown before the user completes the task, and the reward is connected to the goal's content), and the reward mechanism encourages the user to finish the work. 5. The reward model is stored in the library, and users can decide to use this unique model into their own designs.

We believe that users who are collecting special models will be inspired to complete the tasks because of the rarity of the special prizes, achieve their WLB goals they set for themselves, also enjoy the collecting process and the feeling of accomplishing these not work-related tasks.

Scenario 02:

When making plans, Isabelle frequently forgets to include tasks she wishes to complete but are not related to her work or studies on her to-do list, such as participating in sports, pursuing hobbies, or "subtle" things like taking a nature walk. And as a result of her tight daily schedule, she frequently forgets to complete these tasks. She prioritizes these work and study-related tasks and neglects WLB (work-life balance) and personal development as a result of the stresses of her studies and work. Isabelle was busy with her studies recently, but it was a beautiful autumn day and she wanted to relax by enjoying the scenery on a daily basis, so she added the "spend time with nature" goal in the app.

Isabelle made the decision to spend a bit more time in nature on her way home today, taking in the autumn sun and unwinding herself after she was assigned the assignment to "Enjoy the sunset" on October 23. When she finished the activity, the app gave her a special prize that was tied to the theme of the goal. In contrast to the regular blocks, today's special reward was a model of an autumn tree. The model that Isabelle had constructed could then be decorated with an additional special reward block that she could find in her library; this decoration became a treasured memory for Isabelle. She is now more motivated and eager to complete these not work-related tasks as a result of the prize. Isabelle feels she now has a better work-life balance, and it will also be maintained in the long run.