OrganizeMe
My Role
Research Lead / UX Design
(Solo)
Timeline
Feb. - May 2024
Refined in June 2024
Responsibilities
Interaction design
Visual Design
User flow
Rapid prototyping
Project Vision
Challenges
OrganizeMe is a mobile app designed to simplify family schedule management. It provides a centralized platform for coordinating activities, appointments, and tasks.
Features include color-coded calendars, customizable notifications, and collaborative tools, making it easy for families to stay organized and informed at home or on the go.
For this project, I used a goal-directed design method that focuses on our persona creation and goals.
1. Design an Intuitive Interface for familiar & unfamiliar users
2. Create a minimalistic UI while keeping users as the main focus
3. Provide Offline Functionality
4. Maintain Cross-Platform Consistency
Challenges
Kickoff
In this project, I took a goal-directed design approach that proved quite efficient in our design efforts. I found qualitative research methods to be the most effective (e.g., competitive analysis) and most importantly, our persona hypothesis construction.
I started by asking myself some initial key questions:
Q: What is this product, and who is its target audience?
Q: What are the primary needs of our main users?
Q: Who are our main competitors in the market?
Q: What potential challenges might we encounter in the future?
Problem
As a parent, juggling the schedules of your entire family can feel like a never-ending puzzle. Between school activities, sports practices, doctor appointments, and family commitments, keeping track of everyone's busy life can be overwhelming.
As a result...
“I feel like I'm constantly failing. I missed the parent-teacher conference because I mixed up the dates with the school play rehearsal”.
“Every day it's a new chaos. I forgot the dentist's appointment, and we're running late for the piano lesson. Why can't I get a handle on this?”
“I'm exhausted. I'm drowning in schedules between work, school pickups, and extracurricular activities. I wish there was a way to make this all easier.”
“I mixed up the play date with the doctor's appointment, and now we're late for both”
My Contribution
As the Lead UX Designer and Researcher for OrganizeMe, I spearheaded the user-centered design process, ensuring the app meets the needs of families managing busy schedules.
Initially, I conducted extensive user interviews to deeply understand the challenges and preferences of parents and children regarding scheduling. These insights guided brainstorming sessions before arriving at solutions.
I led all research and design activities, from creating wireframes to developing high-fidelity designs and interactive prototypes. These prototypes were crucial for gathering user feedback and testing usability, allowing to refine features iteratively.
01
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
First, I investigated the market to examine whether existing products can help parents better manage and organize their family schedules.
I found that:
While existing products like Cozi, TimeTree, Google Calendar, and FamilyWall provide a range of features for managing family schedules, they often come with usability issues such as cluttered interfaces, limited task management capabilities, or a lack of specific family-oriented features.
Therefore, there is a clear opportunity for OrganizeMe to create a more intuitive and user-friendly app that addresses busy parents' pain points.
Interviews & Affinity Mapping
To better understand how parents currently manage and organize their family schedules and identify potential problems, I advocated for conducting user interviews first before diving into solutions.
In order to gather observations quickly and easily, I conducted affinity mapping to identify themes from the user feedback.
I interviewed 5 parents with varying schedules and family sizes. We found that even those managing family schedules for years struggle to keep track of all activities and appointments, often needing to consult multiple sources.
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Parents usually want visual representations of schedules, such as color-coded calendars and visual reminders, but these features are not always available in current apps.
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Some parents want to schedule and activity recommendations from other parents with similar family dynamics; others prefer suggestions based on general best practices for family management.
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Many parents have difficulties with complex app interfaces, which can be frustrating and time-consuming, especially when quickly adding or modifying events.
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Because of these difficulties, some parents choose to stick to traditional methods like paper calendars or basic digital calendars, while others avoid using family organizer apps altogether due to previous negative experiences.
Parents expressed the need for a mobile-friendly app that allows quick updates and notifications on the go, as they frequently manage schedules while multitasking.
Personas
To better inform our design process and help the team empathize with our users, I synthesized the interview findings and developed the following personas:
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Time Constraints: Feeling overwhelmed by a lack of time to complete various tasks and responsibilities.
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Task Organization: Difficulty in organizing and prioritizing tasks effectively, leading to confusion and inefficiency.
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Stress: Experiencing high levels of stress and overwhelm due to the constant juggling of multiple responsibilities.
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Work-Life Balance: Struggling to find time for personal relaxation, and leisure activities, with family and friends amidst busy schedules and demanding tasks.
OrganizeMe will let users efficiently organize and manage their household tasks and schedules, which will positively affect busy parents like Carla and John by reducing stress and enhancing productivity.
Effectiveness will be measured by tracking user engagement metrics such as task completion rates, time saved on scheduling, and user satisfaction scores through surveys and feedback.
John is a father of two teenagers who works full-time as a lawyer. He is tech-savvy but often finds himself struggling to keep up with the various activities and commitments of his family.
Carla is a 45-year-old property manager who lives with his partner and their one child. Both Carla and his partner have a tight schedule. She wants to find a way to combine all of their schedules efficiently without being a constant struggle.
Needs:
• Set up recurring daily reminders.
• Creating a centralized hub for seamless tasks allowing prioritization.
Needs:
• Wants to customize notifications and reminders for different types of events.
• Wants features that allow his family to leave notes or updates on events.
Frustrations:
• She feels overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities within the constraints of a busy weekday.
• Difficulty balancing and prioritizing tasks.
Frustrations:
• Annoyed by poor app integration, needing to transfer information manually.
• Frustrated by frequent app crashes or slow performance.
Pain Points
LACK OF TIME
STRESS
ORGANIZATION
BALANCE
As a result, we identified the main pain points:
02
DESIGN
At OrganizeMe, I wanted to embrace vibrant colors to craft our unique gradient, inspired by the endless creativity within the world of keyboards. Our splash screens radiate warmth, inviting users to explore further into our app. This colorful design reflects the lively spirit that runs throughout our diverse product range.
Style Guide
Ideation
With the research findings and personas in mind, I used the ‘How might we’ methodology to translate the user problems, needs, and pain points into opportunities for design.
Here are some examples:
HMW
Questions
HMW
HMW
HMW
HMW
HMW
HMW
Simplify the navigation process to help users find information more quickly?
Enhance the onboarding experience to make new users feel more comfortable?
Improve the accessibility of our product?
Create a more engaging and enjoyable user interface?
Provide more personalized recommendations to better meet the individual needs?
Reduce the number of steps required to complete a common task?
HMW
HMW
HMW
HMW
HMW
As a result, I come up with as many ideas as possible and settled on the following core functionalities:
User Flow
I created the user flow to gain a comprehensive understanding of how users navigate through the app from start to finish.
By mapping out each step of the user journey, I could ensure that the app provided an intuitive experience, making it easier for users to organize their tasks effectively.
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Sketches & Wireframes
I quickly sketched out these functionalities to visualize the concepts and ensure I had a clear understanding of the proposed solutions.
I marked with stars the elements I liked the most in each wireframe. As a result, I could easily identify the key design features that resonated with me and prioritize them for further development.
Some users are sensitive to bright colors and low contrast. During the research, I discovered that some users experienced light sensitivity. As the app is intended to function for everyone, I designed an operating system with the possibility to choose between light mode, dark mode, and high contrast mode, as shown in the image below.
High Fidelity Design – Iteration 1
For the initial iteration, my focus is on validating how our app empowers parents to feel more organized and confident in managing their family's schedules. I aim to ensure it helps them stay on top of appointments effortlessly, reduces stress, and enhances their ability to prioritize family time effectively.
I utilized Figma to develop an interactive prototype, enabling thorough testing of these functionalities to refine and optimize the user experience.
Simplified Navigation
Onboarding
Task Completion
Self-Help Resources
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A streamlined navigation process to help users find information quickly and easily.
An improved onboarding experience to make new users feel confident using our product.
Reduced steps required to complete common tasks, increasing overall efficiency for users.
Improved support and resources to help users troubleshoot issues independently.
ONBOARDING
MAIN FLOW
SET A TASK
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SETTINGS
User Feedback & Revised Design Goals
All parents appreciated the personalized reminders for their child's appointments and the easy access to event details. This feedback reassures us, as these functions are our primary focus and set OrganizeMe apart. Our goal is to ensure parents never miss an important moment in their child's life.
Accessibility was kept in mind during the design process
HI FI
PROTOTYPE
03
EVALUATE
Keeping the goals for this iteration in mind, I facilitated user feedback sessions with 5 participants. These participants had different approaches to organization and varying degrees of experience with productivity tools (the example used in my prototype). Here is a brief summary of the process:
User Testing Process
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Introduce the project goal and put users at ease.
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Describe the scenario, set up the context, and let users use the app while thinking aloud.
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Ask to follow up questions and gather feedback.
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Let users fill out a questionnaire. Thank them for participation.
Measuring Success
To quantitatively measure the success of the design, I broke down the larger design goals into detailed, measurable ones, and developed a questionnaire to help me answer those questions.
Challenges
What if the user is Spanish? German? Indian? It is true that words are usually shorter in English compared to Spanish. What if the user's language (e.g. Spanish) contains longer words and looks visually similar to English? That would probably influence the visual design of the app. If I were to continue this project, internationalization will be one of the major challenges in the UI Design.
Measuring Success
Takeaways
As a junior UX Designer enthusiast, OrganizeMe holds a special place in my heart. I aimed to emphasize the significance of expressing creativity through diverse channels. This project marked my introduction to the goal-directed design process, and I can see it being useful in future projects.
I now appreciate the importance of creating persona hypotheses to advance both user needs and business objectives—a step I previously overlooked. Designing exclusively for business goals can lead to failure, particularly evident in applications like OrganizeMe. This realization has underscored the need for balanced and user-centric design approaches in such projects.
01
Competitive analysis
Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Personas
RESEARCH
02
Informed Brainstorming
Wireframes
User Feedback
Hi-fi Design
Interactive Prototype
DESIGN
03
Usability
Design Iterations