DESIGN CHALLENGE
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), anywhere from “80 percent to 95percent of college students procrastinate, particularly when it comes to doing their coursework.” Depending on the student, there are a number of factors that can contribute to procrastinations such as:
- Disengagement from the course or assignment
- Distraction and disruptions in the student’s learning environment, such as noise, clutter, video games, TV shows, or social media
- Fatigue or overwork
- Fear or anxiety around disappointing others or being judged negatively (also known as “evaluation anxiety”
- Inadequate tools and resources, such as unclear instructions from teachers or having a spotty Wi-Fi connection at home
- Poor mental health or untreated mood disorders, which the CDC reports are becoming more prevalent in children and teens due to COVID-19
- Underdeveloped time management or organizational skills
According to a survey conducted by Greenfield Online, 88 percent of college students want to improve their ability to manage their time and 87 percent of students say that better time management and organization skills would help them get better grades. It became clear there are issues around the area of organization and time management. My goal is to create a product that would help students better organize their semesters and prevent procrastination.
I first started off with researching different ways to help prevent procrastination and listed bunch of different ways to stay organized during school. I found that most students procrastinate because they either don’t see the relevance of the project, don’t understand the material or just do not know how to start the project. I also looked up different ways to stay organized and prevent procrastination as well. The main ones that kept on popping up were:
- Use a planner.
- Colour code your notes.
- Flash cards (the Leitner method).
- It is easier to break down large tasks to a bunch of small ones.
- Keep up with a to-do list.
- Plan out projects.
- Study groups.
With these tips, I tried to figured out the main functions I’d like the application to have. I grouped together some of the similar tips and added some more to create the main functions of the application.
I used a university student as the persona because of the differences between high school and post-secondary. In high school for the most part, students could always do most of your work in class with the teacher near them. It is easier for the student to organize their work since the classes are everyday. Whereas with post-secondary the classes are more spread out through out the week and the student would have a shorter deadline. Personally, I found that I had a harder time organizing my time in post-secondary in comparison to high school.
This empathy mapping exercise gave me an understanding of how the user would think, act, and do in terms of procrastination and when thinking of their workload. This would represent the majority of the users of the application and understand the issues that would arise in order to solve them.
After planning out the features that the product needed to solve, I started wireframing and creating a sitemap for the product. This helped create the information architecture and gave an understanding of the layout of the product
I created a few layout sketches just to get an understanding of how the app could look like. I decided to make the application on a tablet mostly due to the note’s sections since I (and many of my friends who own one) use my iPad often to use notes, keep track of all my work and to check my calendar. However, ideally this application would be available on all platforms.
The target audience is mostly towards students, the use light brown as the background was done to mimics kraft paper. This served as the guide when creating the look and feel of the product.
User Test 1
The user tester gave feedback concerning the titles were inconsistent because some had the first letter capitalized and some did not, so I changed all the serif fonts and made them all lower case to fit the theme of the application.
User Test 2
The second user tester felt like the colours were too distracting from the text and that I should make the colours more pastel.
I added more functionality to the prototype and changed the colour palette of the design based on the feedback.
Each class, study groups, and communities would have their own assigned colour to help colour code the work and keep track of the different classes. They would also have an assigned Icon or image.
The user could create a class with an assigned colour and add projects to the class. The user than divides the project into smaller steps that could be achieved through out the days to the due date. All the projects in the class could be broken down into different steps, these steps would then be spread out throughout the weeks to ensure project would get done on time.
The user has access to Flash cards, study groups and notes. Using the Leitner method, the user could create flash cards to help study, The Users could also share their notes and flash cards to their classmates/friends to help each other out. User could create notes by typing them out or through writing it out.
The user could see how well they are achieving goals and finish assignments. The user could also add other users to be friends with.
This project was more of a design challenge for me to complete within a few days. This was an area I always wanted to explore and find solutions for because as a student I also struggled to manage my time and ensure that I complete my projects in time. It was interesting to understand the issues that come with procrastination and different ways to solve it. This project forced me to push outside of my boundaries and consider the different possibilities that can occur. Since there could be so many different use cases for this project, I had to take a step back and consider who I really wanted to design for.
Moving forward, I’d like to do more user testing and revisit the layout and functionality of the application. Discover ways to improve and iterate on this version. I'd also like to experiment with different use cases and consider who else can be using this product.
