We always book meetings in our calendars with other people, so we know everyone is aware and ensure it happens. Why should our own tasks be any different, if the end goal is still to ensure that it happens? Instead of creating to-do lists, why not just book a day, time and duration in our calendars, so we can stay accountable for our own work, just as we block time when several people are involved.
Inspired by existing research on the art of time blocking, the idea for “Boost” was born; it adds productivity to task management tools promoting the art of time blocking for project teams and individual contributors. Boosting productivity, transparency, performance and instilling a sense of achievement in your daily grind.
What is time-blocking?
It is simply taking your to-do lists and then scheduling it in your calendar for a specific time and duration. That’s it! This simple hack will give you a better overview of your day, make you better at estimating how long it takes you to do particular tasks and help you get more accomplished.
How does Boost work?
Boost is a concept app, which integrates with a company’s existing task management tool. Syncs all of the teams projects and tasks, and prompts team members to schedule their individual tasks in its calendar. Providing notifications and reminders as new tasks are assigned to schedule them in. The more team members schedule, the better overview of the week they will get in the built-in progress dashboard. It aids in managing workload more efficiently and provide a better record of how much time and effort project tasks take.
Storyboard of how “Boost” can help project teams
The Challenge
The challenge, I had presented to me, was to find an opportunity from my past project management experience, and find a solution with a mobile application component. This was a 6 week class project for the Interaction Design program at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. It was an individual project, with research being the primary component, to find a problem opportunity and generate an idea to close that gap.
The Ideation
It started with a brain dump of all the keywords that came in my mind relating to project management, and asked my classmates to do the same. My classmates then assisted me in organizing them into groups, in order of priority. From this initial exercise, I was trying to find patterns to narrow down my focus area for a problem opportunity.
Brainstorming session
After the initial activity, I was still not clear on what area of project management to focus on, so I decided to start thinking of problem statements. This was a brainstorming style session, so I asked participants from my class to write down the first thing/s that came into their minds and place it on the wall of stickies. The main issues I was trying to understand:
“What are some challenges faced while working in project teams? How about in collaborating with team members?”
Analyzing Findings
Once I had all the responses, I grouped all the similar findings into categories. The top 3 concerns that emerged from this activity were:
Accountability
Communication issues
Different perspective/ideas
After analyzing the findings, I focused on the top concern of accountability and raised this question:
“How do you create accountability for project work?”
For this part of the research I looked at online resources for some answers and 3 main themes emerged. In order to create accountability for project work, following is needed:
Clearly articulating tasks that needs to be done and who is responsible for it.
Getting the tasks and its responsibility in writing.
Visibility of all tasks throughout the project team.
Having previously worked in project management, and having used tools like Jira/Confluence. I knew there are many software solutions for task management tools. Therefore I wanted to dig a little deeper, and identify a solution for after accountability has been established, how can we take it a step further?
Digging a little deeper...
“How can we help project team members to more efficiently achieve the tasks they are accountable for, making them more productive and motivated?”
Conducted a few interviews in how people currently ensure they stay accountable for their tasks at work. Having that understanding, I started to research how successful people ensure they are productive and accountable for their tasks. My findings led me to the concept of blocking time rather than doing to-do lists and this inspired the idea for the primary goal of the app.
The Goal
“Help people utilize the art of time blocking and provide a sense of accomplishment in their work.”
Conducted initial paper prototype testing to gauge feedback on the concept and iterated on several rounds of testing moving from paper to higher fidelity wireframes.
Feedback
Make productivity progress section visuals more engaging, rather then just using graphs.
Clearly articulate in the tasks page what work time needs to be scheduled, as the wording of “Pending” and “Scheduled” was confusing.
“Repeat” in the schedule work time dialogue box confused people. Find a better way to promote booking work time in manageable iterative blocks.
Instead of just having “progress notes”, it would be ideal to have pre-populated options to pick from, relating to status.
For smaller tasks, it will be good to have an option to not schedule it in calendar.
Sketches
After the paper prototype, I started to refine the screens with more detail. I also wanted to focus on the visuals for the dashboard screens and outlined all the different progress variables that could be visualized. Ultimately, the goal was to have the most effective progress indicators that would promote a sense of accomplishment in team members.
Wireframing & Flow
Style Guide
Walk-through
Here is a brief walk-through of the final design and navigation to different pages within the app.
The process can be very ambiguous when you don’t already have a problem in mind. I learned from this exercise to trust the process and keep an open mind, which actually helped me in identifying an opportunity, I wouldn’t have thought of before.
Iterate, iterate, iterate. Don't get too attached to the initial concept and be willing to adapt with testing results and feedback. The product at the end turns out much better than the initial concept.