Creating a personal calendar app that can generate free days between college students, reducing the hassle of making plans with hectic schedules.
End to end mobile app
Solo Designer Research &
UX/UI
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Through my own personal observation, making plans are hard and when I briefly talked about it with other people, it wasn’t long for me to realise I’m not the only one.
I wanted to design a tool to help people make this experience better. For this project, I aimed to explore the problem space around peoples ability to make plans, then create a solution that helps them simplify that process.
There is a lot of time management apps. There so many features which tries to fix this problem of group planning. So, how would my app be different?
Designed an end-to-end mobile app — part personal event tracker, part community based, all about generating time slots which all parties are available to attend
I learned that most solutions require joint collaboration which dismiss the need of personal plans, that's why I made this app a private calendar that still connects with other people.
Discovered how unorganized schedules can overwhelm people to the point of isolation and loneliness.
Discover the process of making plans and finding pain points
Define the problem & Identify the users
Explore different tactics users use to solve this problem
Identify any existing
apps or solutions
I had a general view of what the problem is, it all started when I observed in my own friend group the saying -
This made me go research on the Why?
Based on assumption I wanted to see if age was possibly a factor for a person to have this kind of problem, or if they are even related at all.
To conduct this research I talked briefly to all age ranges (3 of each category), asking quick basic questions about making plans and their relationship with it.
1 - 18
Interviewed Age Range: 8 - 18
Younger end don't usually make any plans.
Plans mostly involve the parents involvement.
For ‘teens’ they have school routines, friend group is there also so they don't really need make any plans.
Part-timers usually work on the weekends, so after school activities was easy to plan.
18-40
Interviewed Age Range: 18 - 36
Late teen years and 20s - 30 there seems to be a negative relationship with planning.
They find it overwhelming to plan anything with friends.
Feeling hard to have a personal life.
From late 20s - 40 routine takes course, everything has to be planned in months advance, even for small things.
40 - 60+
Interviewed Age Range: 44 - 62
In this age group not much planning occurs.
Mostly routine based lives without that many discrepancies.
Occasional planning is months or even a year in advance.
Retirees have much more free time but also is occasionally planning. Enjoys leisure time or just time with family and spouses.
The one group that I found had the most negative relationship with planning was those in late teens and mid twenties. There was a few things which they all had in common, they were all students in some sort of education or freshly graduated, was working part time and some having their own hobbies.
Education
Work
Hobbies
After defining the users, I conducted another, more in depth, interview with potential users.
I interviewed 10 users (current college students and recent graduates)
to understand their own experiences with making plans.
Why they feel/find planning is hard
What they find is the most complicated part of the process?
Their current process of making plans with people
How did they try to resolve it?
How they organize their own personal schedules?
What negative effects the problem had done to them?
Photos displayed are not the acutal interviewees
“I think it’s because me and my friends are in different courses so our time clashes, ohhh and also I work and have trainings on some days too”
“Finding the date where we are all available. Bro, it’s nearly impossible when there’s like more than 2 people involved”
“I propose in our group chat then see if people are down, then usually in a week of yes and no’s. we get a date and hope for the best it pulls through”
“My group actually used one app to plan. It was them ones where you share a calendar. I dropped it though, because I didn't want to make all my plans public.”
“I have a notebook with me but that’s for studies, not really plans. I try to put stuff in my calendar but most of the time I’m just hoping I remember”
“It has been a really hard on my mental and my social life. There are times where I have to be with myself for hours on days, not really living the college life”
Make it quick
Make the process of finding the free days which the people are available quicker.
Connection
Make the process not be disconnected with their friends.
Privacy
Let the user be able to have their own personal belongings without sharing, but let them have the ability to.
Stressful
Making plans are super stressful, too many variables to manage, like other peoples schedules.
Time Consuming
Relying on other peoples responses to make the plan makes it take time, leading to it being scrapped.
Feeling Disorganized
Having no plans for social events because of a hectic schedule can make users feel disorganized, leading to overpressure to isolation.
I wanted to see the effects of a lack of social connection in a college setting would lead to.
What I found in multiple research papers is listed:
Lack of social connections can lead to feelings of isolation and rejection, This can lead to reduced motivation.
Social interactions often help students process information, get academic support and motivation.
More likely to develop mental problems due to not having a support system to manage stress.
Social interactions is needed for college and in their future workplaces since communication is critical.
Social isolation can impact physical health. Loneliness and stress can lead to weakened immune function, increased inflammation and higher blood pressure.
After testing these apps and their user experience, I gained 3 main takeaways which I believe would help me in making the features and user experience of my own design
Current calendar apps rely on collaborating calendars with others, creating a messy overly cluttered user experience.
Collective calendars still rely on others
for accurate updates and day planning.
Invite systems also rely on other people abilities to communicate, with the use of external platforms such as social media groupchats or in person meetings
All the collaborative calendars need users to put in every plan which could be a problem with privacy. This is where I think invite systems for events is a much better approach.
With the user pains from the interviews I created How Might We? questions.
How might we make collaboration between friends but also keep the privacy of personal calendars?
How might we remove the reliance of others in the process of making plans?
How might we make the process of making plans quicker and smoother?
Persona
Meet Josh. Josh is a persona created by the needs, pain points, lifestyle, experience and personality of the users in the interviews I conducted
Im creating this app to tackle the problem people who might be juggling educational studies, part time work, extra curricular activities and their social life.
To make sure to have those needed social breaks in an environment as stressful as higher educations.
Make the process much easier to navigate through without its additional stress, hopefully leading to a more happier experience in higher education, and the decline of isolation and mental problems.
Duration of average planning times dropping
Customer Satisfaction
Shares + Reviews
Users perspective of planning - less hesitant or burdened to make plans
I simplified the goals, based on our for the functionality of the app into to 3 things:
Simplifying the process of
creating events, through minimal design and smooth UI.
Create a personal experience
for the user and their friends, giving them the sense of community within the app but still be able to enjoy the privacy of their own.
Making the process of making plans rely on less factors and offload the stress that it gives to those involved in the planning.
Add schedules
Repeat ‘Events’
Reminder Timer Notifications
Colour coded event system
Customizable personal calendars
Invite System, no collaborative calendars
Add Friends
Free day finder generator that generates common free days between the set of friends.
Give date options
Explore layout and feature implementations.
After experimenting with a lot of low fidelity wireframes to get the layout of the app and mapping of the features, I decided to go straight in to mid fidelity wireframes so I can start with the Ui.
The Users that I focused on is more likely be used to digital products, so I wanted to see how they found the experience. I set myself goals for this user test so I can see what changes to do before the final design.
Test onboarding and see if the user understands what the apps goal is.
Find opinions on the friend list and the process of adding, generating, choosing and saving a plan.
Get their thoughts of the app and if they would install this app.
Test the user if they understand the layout, structure and functions in the home page.
See their thoughts of the home page displaying multiple events.
The testing for this design consisted of 4 college students and 1 recent graduate.
Test onboarding and see if the user understands what the apps goal is.
4/5 knew what the apps goal is.
0/5 knew how the app would achieve that goal.
Test the user if they understand the layout, structure and functions in the home page.
2/5 understood the layout and structure
3/5 understood how the functions worked (not sure of the ‘3 bubble button’
See how they find the friend list and the process of adding, generating, choosing and saving a plan.
5/5 understood the process of the ‘free day generator’
5/5 didn't know how to make groups
Get their thoughts of the app and if they would install this app.
5/5 said they would use the app
See their thoughts of the home page displaying multiple events.
4/5 said it might've felt too compressed
3/5 isn't sure they like the display
Users in onboarding wasn't sure how or what the app does. so I changed the first opening line to a more direct explainable sentence instead of a vague explanation.
One big design change I did was variant 1 main/calendar page of the app. Users said that it might've felt a bit too tight in one spot (the top of events) and the bottom felt too empty. Event titles also not showing fully was a concern.
This made me too redesign the page to a more open design, without squishing everything together in one area. Also fixed the navigation buttons, removing the burger menu maximising space.
Another redesign was the friends / generate page. The design didn't show how to make groups, friends or favourites. Simply it was lacking in a clear way to deal with friends.
Another quick addition to the design was that the users liked the process of making events and the extra tools it has. But they also said that since they’re schedules are fixed it would be a hassle to repeat the same schedule every week.
This is where I added another function, which is intended to be used to those who have schedules.
Add the schedule, the timeframe it will last and then automatically update the calendar.
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Fonts
Headers -
Ledger
Main Body Text -
Roboto Slab
Logo Name -
Bahaus
Home Page
Free Day Generator Page
Profile / Settings
1st Variation Scroll View
2nd Variation Calendar View
Notifications
Add Event
Send Invite
Search
Add Friend
Add Group
Favourite
Repeat an Event
Add a schedule
Put a timer
Approve Event
Flexible Day
As of now Sproutly isnt fully developed to be even considered to be published as an actual app, but it has a lot of potential to create a space for students.
If I were to progress in developing this app I would keep tabs on how users engage with it. Ask more questions such as, What works? What doesn’t? Could anything operate more smoothly? How will user needs differ through time? I would also do more user research and concept design testing to make it more fitting for users.
During this project there was something I noticed when creating it. I learnt the importance of having a design library of components and other things. During the design phase i spent soo much time creating the same components one by one, duplicating one by one when i could've just used a library to make that process much more easier.
I started this project with no specific user, it was a broad idea with no foundation. All I knew was that I would like to tackle the problem of event planning.
With this project I recognized the importance of users and how their input has been very helpful in all stages of my design process.