Walendar
A calendar app that provides an intuitive schedule experience to uWaterloo students.
DESCIPLINE
User Research, Interaction Design, Product Design, Competitive Research
ROLE
UX Designer
UI Designer
FOR
Personal Passion Project
TEAM
Solo
TIME
15 days
August 2022
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, Miro, Sketch, Zoom
Summary
Before a study term begins, many of my friends complain about how busy they are and how hard it is for them to arrange a working schedule. I believed there could be a way to enhance academic performance and reduce anxiety for uWaterloo Students.
The solution is an intuitive calendar app tailored specifically for uWaterloo Students through design thinking: Research, Ideation, Prototype and Validation.
The final deliverable is a hi-fi Figma mockup.
Spark
"I need a smart calendar to save my uni-life."
Here is a conversation between me and my friends, complaining about how complicated our class schedules could be, and how bad some calendar apps are designed.
Why scheduling?
—"It's the necessity to achieve a task."
Schedule is a plan for carrying out a process. Almost everyone follows a certain schedule: teachers, students, workers, engineers, etc....
Establish a Routine
When people create and stick to a schedule, they are establishing a routine. As a result, people have more structure and discipline in life.
Goals Become More Tangible
Schedule helps jot down goals, chunk time, and create separate tasks for specific goals.
Research
“What are the problems??”
My research objective was to understand uWaterloo student's scheduling behaviors. Get a better understanding of how users perceive schedule and associate school with it.
Goals
Understand user behaviors, motivations, pain points and goals.
Define user problems and challenges.
Create user persona and empathy map that help drive the design process.
Questions
How do users arrange class schedules and what are some tools they use?
How do users feel when they're using the scheduling tools?
What are the difficulties that users are facing towards making a perfect schedule?
Methodology
Conducted online user interviews with 5 UWaterloo students.
Aged 19-21.
FromEngineering and Math program.
Have experiences using calendar for scheduling.
Empathy Map
User feedback from the interviews were noted, "Empathy Map" was used to synthesize all the data.
Common Themes
1. Live and intuitive Time table
2. Single Sign-on
3. Straight-forward course information
4. Check points for assignments
5. Tailored for UWaterloo
User Persona
After talking to users and understood what users mostly concern about, I started to personify users of the product using User Persona tool.
Goal Statement
Walendar lets users manage their schedules in an efficient and intuitive way.
Ideation
With all the user thoughts and information on hands, I dive into a creative phase where design ideas were brainstormed to solve user problems and achieve the final goal.
Competitive Audit
I conducted a competitive research across 4 similar schedule apps, aiming to identify competitors' strengths and weaknesses. The insights gained helped me develop better products and more effective UX designs.
Themes
Product Features
Value Proposition
Visual Design
Interaction
How Might We
HMW make schedule management system more intuitive?
HMW help users keep updated of their classes?
HMW show users their daily schedule as easy as by a glance?
HMW show users their daily schedule as easy as by a glance?
Solutions
Course management system
Dynamic calendar
Timetable
Assignment & Task
Notes
Onboarding System
LEARN Single-Sign
Information Auto-fetch
Clear, straight forward display of data
Task checkpoints
Clear Information Architecture
Story Board
User Story helps me shape how will users interact with my product in the real world and visualize their emotions and thoughts.
Paper Wireframe
Aiming to visualize the look of the product and how user will interact with each feature, I started to wireframe on papers.
Design & Test
With all the user thoughts and information on hands, I dive into a creative phase where design ideas were brainstormed to solve user problems and achieve the final goal.
Usability Test
Usability testing is a commonly used user research technique, and it's a great method for ensuring my designs are easy to use. I conducted moderated tests with UWaterloo Students by asking them to complete a few tasks.
Goal
Figure out if users can finish the core tasks within the app
Questions
HMW make schedule management system more intuitive?
HMW help users keep updated of their classes?
HMW show users their daily schedule as easy as by a glance?
HMW show users their daily schedule as easy as by a glance?
KPI
Time on task
Conversion rate
User error rate
Gather and organize information
Data synthesis
Data Into Changes
After the usability tests, I got lots of great information from real users that can help me reach my goal. Therefore, I made the following changes to my design, made it’s better for use.
Timetable
Course Page
Task & Assignment
Design System
My research objective was to understand uWaterloo student's scheduling behaviors. Get a better understanding of how users perceive schedule and associate their school life with it.
