ReminderX
PROBLEM STATEMENT
ReminderX, following the recent relaunch of its to-do list and smartphone reminder app, recognizes the need to transcend the generic landscape of similar applications. Although the app's layout, appearance, and interaction are akin to common reminder apps, ReminderX aspires to evolve beyond a conventional tool by embracing user-centric methodologies to identify and address the distinctive needs of its target audience.
In an ambitious move, ReminderX is committed to elevating its app beyond a mere task manager. The company acknowledges the importance of wisdom in app design and aims to cultivate a deeper understanding of its users. The overarching goal is to transform ReminderX into a personalized and indispensable tool for a specific user demographic.
To achieve this, ReminderX is embarking on a strategic journey that involves gathering insights, employing user-focused methodologies, and conducting in-depth research to uncover its potential user base's unique challenges and requirements. The company recognizes the need for more clarity regarding the specific user profiles to focus on and their corresponding needs. However, ReminderX is open to exploration and innovation, providing carte blanche to define the direction of upcoming releases.
The company is entrusting defining the focus of upcoming releases to a strategic exploration, emphasizing the importance of user feedback and market intelligence. This user-centric approach is poised to guide the design and development of ReminderX, ensuring that each release is not just an incremental update but a purposeful step toward meeting the unique requirements of its intended audience.
Project goals
- Discover the target users.
- What do the target users need from the product?
- What problems are the users trying to solve?
- How will the solution help the user solve it?
Project Duration
Proposal
Research
Briefing
Lo-Fi Workflows & Wireframes
Hi-Fi Wireframes
Tools Used
Approach
User Interviews
The proposed concept revolves around a comprehensive approach to discovering user insights. This includes identifying the target users and understanding their pain points and aspirations. By gathering information systematically, ReminderX aims to define the project direction in a manner that aligns seamlessly with the needs and preferences of its chosen user demographic.
A user research protocol was developed with a list of questions to establish in-person moderated interviews with four participants on their experiences and journeys using a reminder or to-do list manually and digitally. Interviews are analyzed and synthesized into data to create a shared vision. Next, based on user research, design tenets will guide the redesign of the application and should be specific, nuanced, and actionable.
Interview Questions
Warm-up Questions:
- How often do you use a computer at home or work?
- Is your work primarily desk-based or paper-based?
- What are some products/apps/services you use regularly?
- When do you usually first use a manual or app reminder or to-do list in your day?
- Tell me about your role at your company. Or can you give us some background about your current position?
- What does your typical weekday look like?
- How does the to-do list or reminder app work here for you?
- What are the biggest problems/inefficiencies in this process or function?
Topic Specific Questions:
- What’s your relationship like with reminders or a to-do list?
- How do you currently go about creating a reminder or to-do list?
- How much time do you typically spend creating a reminder or to-do list?
- Tell me about the last time you tried to make a reminder or to-do list.
- What do you like about how you currently develop a reminder or to-do list?
- What is your most significant pain point in building a reminder or to-do list?
- Why do you keep making a reminder or a to-do list, and why is it important to you?
- What types of workarounds have you designed to help you with this?
- What is the hardest part about creating a reminder or to-do list?
- What are you currently doing to make the reminder or to-do list easier?
- How does creating a reminder or to-do list impact other areas of your life/work?
- What other products or tools have you tried out?
- Have you paid for any of these other products or tools?
- How did you hear about these additional products or tools?
- What do you like or dislike about these different products or tools?
- Are you seeking a solution or alternative for creating a reminder or to-do list?
- What satisfaction do you get from achieving a goal or completing a task?
- What are the biggest challenges in keeping your schedule?
- How do you coordinate your scheduling of tasks and events across work and home?
- What are you trying to achieve when you use a reminder or a to-do list, and in what context?
- What goals are you trying to accomplish when creating a reminder or to-do list?
Open-Ended Questions:
- How does keeping track of reminders and to-do’s make you feel?
- What types of digital or manual tools do you use to track your to-do’s and reminders?
- Tell me about the last time you created a reminder or to-do list.
- How does that feel?
- What is that like for you?
- Can you walk me through how you create a reminder or to-do list?
After Introducing the Product Concept Questions:
- What are your first reactions to what I’ve read to you?
- Why do you think someone would use this product?
- Can you see yourself ever using this product?
- How or why do you think you can trust this product?
- How do you think this product is going to help you?
- Would you use this product today?
- What might keep people from using this product?
- What’s the most you would be willing to pay for this product?
- Does this remind you of any other products?
- What would this need to do to meet your needs?
- Would this product address the challenges you mentioned earlier?
If you could only have 2 (or 3 or 4) of those things you mentioned, what would they be?
What capabilities could you not live without in this product?”
Here's a crazy suggestion. Imagine that you can schedule all your tasks and events using a smartphone personal AI assistant, and you rarely have to enter any information manually. Instead, you review and confirm your digital assistant schedules. What do you think of that? How would you want to interact with such a system?”
ACTIONS
Define
The research was gathered into a plotted graph based on the user responses of the four participants.
User Persona
Julie has worked in the wine industry for many years. She handles all sales and business transitions. She has a busy schedule that varies between the office and frequent visits to vineyards while juggling the kid’s schedules. Julie primarily carries her phone and a written planner in out-of-service areas at the vineyards.
Julie needs reminders; otherwise, they don’t get done. She would like to have her information all stored in one place eventually. She wants her app to sync effectively across her devices and be easily shareable. She would like her calendar to be customizable and fun, making it a want rather than a need. She would like more than two alerts for different reminders and customizable ringtones. She would like the app to have a goal list for weekly tasks that need to get done outside of daily scheduled tasks. She would have AI assistance when creating reminders and to-do lists to make them more accessible, cutting back on manual inputs.
Design Tenets based on users needs
User flows and Lo-Fi Wireframes
Using workflows throughout the design process will provide ReminderX with a great user experience throughout the app’s journey with the user in mind at every step.
Low-fidelity wireframes were created for the next release of ReminderX's to-do lists and reminder app. The design reflects key actions the user will take while using the app. Some basic user needs were incorporated in the first launch of ReminderX’s to-do list and reminder app.
- Onboarding
- How to create a Reminder
- How to Create a To-Do List
- How to Edit the date, Edit the time, and delete an event
TESTING
Feedback
The Hi-Fi wireframes were created from feedback from the team on the Lo-Fi wireframes.
design
Hi-Fi Wireframes
RESULTS
Ideate
The Hi-Fi wireframes were created based on feedback from the team. The initial onboarding pulls data from your phone, allowing you to sync multiple calendar accounts in one place and allowing all resources to be easily accessible. Consistency, simplicity, and user-friendliness come from creating a reminder and to-do list. The standard is based on Notes and the Calendar smartphone app, allowing users to have familiar interfaces based on Jakob’s Law.
ReminderX already offered a start and end time for reminders. The application has a place in reminders to create more than two alerts for a single reminder. The user can add a custom ringtone to the reminder. The ringtones offered on your phone would set the standardization. An additional sub-section to “add people” in a reminder was updated to quickly share the calendar to add a name or email instead of just email. When entering the contact’s name, it would search like the contacts app.
Furthermore, custom Siri Shortcuts have been added to reminders and to-do lists to set a standard or create custom shortcuts that are task-specific. Example of creating a custom shortcut: “Hey Siri. Add cherries to my grocery list in Notes.” The application would be as customizable as possible with unique features on font hierarchy, stickers, color-coding, and themes to offer different layout options so that each user could create a unique calendar based on their aesthetic. With current reminders, the user has several options already, so the decision to add these to a specific reminder would be up to the user on how many choices are needed to choose for a reminder following Hick’s and Tesler’s law on complexity. A button was created to add sections for checkpoints and goals to drop down over the top of the calendar for a specific week.
TESTING
Feedback
The company will need to run a usability test of the ReminderX app's main claim reporting flow for accessibility, that is, to ensure it is usable by people with vision and mobility impairments. Identify areas of the flows that cause difficulty for the blind, low vision, and mobility-impaired users and generate recommendations for addressing these issues.
LESSONS LEARNED
I learned Adobe XD was more accessible to navigate than Figma due to my knowledge of Adobe products and key commands. After focusing on the screens, I needed to create the app's navigation, which got more manageable once I learned.
However, the workflow for what I thought was a simple settings screen is more complex than I realized. I redrew this repeatedly to understand the precise steps of the navigation structure.
I learned that research is a critical part of understanding the needs and wants of users. During the wireframe phase, I kept referring to my research to confirm or deny my thought process. In addition, the feedback was critical in guiding the wireframe navigation and design for anything that needed to be clarified on the user journey.
