Designing a productivity app to help students and young professionals stay focused.
ROLE:
Lead UI, human-centered design, user research
TIME:
13 weeks (Sep-Dec 2023)
TEAM:
Abbey Hurst, Amanda Yee
You sit down at your desk, turn on your computer, and set out to work on an urgent project. But wait - one more text to reply to before you really get started. Three hours later, you find yourself caught up in a rabbit-hole on Pininterest, collecting inspiration for your imaginary trip to Switzerland. Oops.
Procrastinating is inevitable, especially as remote work blurs together how we allocate our personal and professional time. The goal of this project is to explore ways to help young professionals stay focused.
In order to practice human-centered design, we set out to seek real anecdotes – we wanted to build a product from real user problems rather than come up with a concept from a preconceived idea.
First, we held 6 interviews with students and young working professionals. We found that the presence of others can create a sense of accountability and drive productivity, as people do not want to be viewed as lesser.
As we brainstormed potential ideas, we examined the current market for trends related to focus and productivity and noticed an opportunity space in the social and gamification area, leading us to our concept:
Complete tasks to grow and collect crystals! Compete with others for a fun way to achieve your goals.
Build a supportive network and exchange positive affirmations for a motivational boost.
Track your daily or weekly tasks with graphs that display your progress and personal growth over time.
Rapid prototyping helped me understand the user flow of each screen of the experience.
We tested our medium-fidelity prototype with 5 users and used their feedback to inspire the next wave of future iterations!
Users thought that the floating 'Add Task' button was part of the Quartz League because they were right next to each other. We decided to include a footer navigation to improve discoverability and increase engagement.
Instead of our original concept of crystals growing/shrinking as users work on a task, seeing the crystal form would be a more fun and clear way to visualize their progress!
Uncollected crystals are presented as silhouettes to add some mystery and duplicate crystals are able to be combined to create new crystals!
You can’t buy other people’s growth, but you can buy encouragement for others. Unlock new affirmations and reactions to send to your friends!
The branding of Fluorite is calm, organized, playful, mystical, and personal. I chose purple as the primary color for its ability to blend the spirituality and serenity of blue with the passion and energy of red.
To appeal to Gen Z and spiritual seekers, I used vibrant gradients to evoke the feelings of auras and lava lamps, while ensuring a balanced use of all colors through the Glassmorphism style. The frosted glass effect further enhances the spiritual aspect of the design, resembling the surface of crystals.
Iterate! Iterate! Iterate! I had originally moved to high fidelity too early and learned to slow down. Design is a circular process and there is always room for more iterations!
Controlled Chaos — My typical design style is minimal with no more than 2-3 colors. Creating a vibrant, fun experience to appeal to a Gen Z audience forced me to go out of my comfort zone and work with a rainbow of colors and gradients.
Awww, looks like that's the end.
Hi again, I'm glad you're here 🫶
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