UCann App

1. Discover

2. Define

Finding our Problem

We narrowed down the topic of our problem to be adjusting to campus, however we needed to figure out what part of adjusting to campus was difficult. We started out by interviewing students with different backgrounds to hear their opinion on the transition of coming to school.

“It’s definitely been an adjustment but I think I got used to it pretty quickly.”

- In State Senior living off campus with roomates

“There's so much work so I feel like I dont have free time to myself”

- Out of State Freshman living on campus with a random roommate

Then, we conducted a survey which received 130 responses. This was to gauge the aspects of transitioning to school that gave students difficulty. The findings in this survey contradicted our initial assumption about students' difficulty getting adjusted to living on campus. Most students felt that on a scale of 1-5 they adjusted to living on their own at a 4. This data shocked us and caused us to pivot our problem statement. 

Problem Statement

How might we use a mobile app to improve time management skills for undergraduate students at UConn?

Key Takeaways

There are 3 facets of Time Management: Attention Management, Life Management, and Self Regulation

Attention Management is how we can focus on a task without getting distracted. Life Management are the unexpected events that derail your plans. Self Regulation is our internal motivation to complete a task. Students track their assignments hour by hour rather than in a big picture sense

There is a correlation between mental health and time management

People suffer from Sunday Scary, which means they have a lot of anxiety for the impending week on sunday. Most heart attacks occur on Sundays.With poor mental health comes low motivation.

There are study techniques to help with motivation

Techniques such as the Pomodoro method, which breaks up the amount of work done at a time helps with students motivation. After COVID, students are experiencing social engagement fatigue, and are relearning study skills and social skills

3) Develop

Ideation Stage

We used Miro, a web application to help us with our ideation stage. We worked together to come up with 3 different digital media tools to solve our problem

Full Transparency

This is where my first iteration of the project ended. I did no wireframes, no comprehensive information architecture. I took a template off the internet and made it my own with fonts because this was my first time using Adobe XD. At this point, I wrapped up my project, handed it in for grading and forgot about it for 2 years.

Reigniting the Flame

Between my freshman and junior year I had a lot of growth. I worked on some new projects, learned more about user research, and fine tuned my skills in UI. When the opportunity came to rework this project, I jumped at the chance to showcase my skills.

Looking Back

These designs were the first iterations of the app that I created 2 years ago. I looked at this app and identified some pain points that I wanted to address with my new design. After working on this group project, I moved on and completed other projects. However, I wasn’t satisfied with how the project turned out and knew that I wanted to revisit it in the future. The first thing I wanted to do was assess some pain points of the app to give me a starting point to work off of.

Pain Points

• There is no bottom navigation to easily switch between screens
• The home screen buttons don’t come across as buttons
• There is equal weighting between all the buttons on the first page, whereas the app should be more focused in keeping track of assignments rather than mental health resources
• There is no consistency in border radius in the cards on the app.
• There is little consistency in font weights, and the hierarchy is not well established

New and Improved Problem Statement

How might we create a mobile app that helps students manage their time by incentivizing completing assignments, which in turn improves their mental health?

Reanalyzing the Data

My biggest issue with my first iteration was that it gave equal weight to time management and mental health resources. The survey showed that 42.3% found time management to be the most difficult part of transitioning as opposed to 32.3% for mental health. The bottom line was that I wanted this app to be time management forward with mental health functions that could be toggled.

Information Architecture

I organized the app to be focused on the Task Input and Reward aspect because based on the survey students felt that they struggled with Time Management the most. I decided to make the Pomodoro Timer and the Mental Health Resources a widget that can be disabled because not all students struggle with their mental health.

Sketches

Wireframes

In my wireframes I wanted to establish the general layout of the app and the design of the cards that I use throughout the app. Overall I stayed true to this design, however there are some small tweaks I made including rounding the cards and changing the icons in the bottom navigation that I made along the way.

4. Deliver

Iteration

At first, I wanted to go for a single color app with variations of the opacity of the main color to create my color palette, however this left my app feeling a little flat, so I decided to change up the color scheme to replace the purple-blue to a more standard blue. At this point I added a red accent color, but it drew too much attention to the reward bar, so I decided to add a dark blue which corresponds with UConn’s branding. By the end of my designs I implemented a rounded border radius on the body of the app to add more visual interest to the app and I chose to fill in the bottom navigation icon to make it more clear for the user which screen they are on

Flat Designs

UCann Demo