Journey: Goal Management

Accomplishing long term goals for overworked adults by combining a forgiving list, planner, and diary

Brief
Working hard is an obsession - students, parents, and working adults act without priority. Journey is a mobile app that realigns daily activities for overworked adults.
Break Down Goals

Create, modify, or change steps to your goals at any time. Life is full of twists and turns, but anchor the big picture.

 
 
View by Day

A week flies by. Count how many hours you’ve spent in accomplishing your goal, know what your were working on, and spot any possible work patterns.

Live Outside

Complete or track steps from the widget screens. We all have lives. It’s like bringing your sticky notes everywhere.

 
 
Make Moments

Journal about the particularly good moments through photos or links. View them from a treasure chest.

Interview Takeaways

Conversations revealed their struggle to work on long term goals because of overwhelming daily tasks. I compiled 6 interviewees in video call format. Each call ran about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Establishing Goals

From the interviews I decided that they needed to separate long term goals from daily tasks. This solution would be a permanent companion that is easy to repeatedly visit and organizes what is seemingly unquantifiable, which could alleviate the mental frustrations they battled.

Understanding Users

Personas allowed me to learn that the app would need: planning, creating, and documenting components to solve all user problems.

User Journeys

I also put myself in the process of long-term-goal achieving to identify high and low points of motivation. Since the timeline is usually greater than a month, I spotted opportunities to when the companion should motivate them to come back.

Real-Life Interactions

Through interaction architecture I learned some key modules could exist across all users: widget notifactions, timers, data visualizers. I also learned that a lot of interactions depend greatly on circumstance and lifestyle.







Sketching

 

Over-Wireframing

Wireframing taught me the importance of UX writing for realistic situations. But though they were comprehensive, these interactions weren’t sensitive to the time users spend on the app. Additionally, I simplified data visualizations from the last step.

 

Exploring Visual Design

I explored 2 visual directions inspired by the training styles gym pokemon. Visually each direction communicated a different speed. I chose the steady and continuous.



Moodboard: Sprint

I learned a lot about using shapes and color to highlight pressed states and flat shadows to establish depth. After a round of critique I learned that this style didn’t meet the goal of adding value. It felt like a regular calendar with added features.



Applied Style: Sprint

More feedback taught me that it was difficult to understand interactions without any visual context. So I carried over type, color, shapes, and hierarchy.

Moodboard: Vue

I also felt that the shape language was too sharp and unfriendly. More organic, rhythmic shapes communicated a steady approach towards achieving one's goal.



Feedback through Existing Solutions

I recognized establishing an environment and visual metaphors became integral. Like Shopify, metaphors clarify the purpose behind intended interactions.

Visual Metaphors

So I created some illustrations that allowed a lot of high contrast and flat shapes. These backgrounds clarified planning, building, and reflecting.

Final Designs

I applied these illustrations into the backgrounds of the entire design. The final result felt more intimate and established connection to a user's deskspace.