TAKE TIME FOR LEARNINGS, EVERYWHERE, ANYTIME.
I always complain that I don’t have time to read! So, when they told me about this project: create a habit tracking app, I decided to focus on how people take time for personal growth. Yes, I wanted to include not only books, but articles, podcasts, Ted talks, but also all the mediums that people choose to learn new topics or just to learn about their interests.
This was my first idea, so I decided to ask people if they agreed with me. I first asked around me just talking to people and gradually I found out that most of them agreed and were curious about what would be my idea to solve this. Here comes my survey! In order to create the survey, I brainstormed a lot on what I needed to learn, to ask and what information would I will be using for my project. It took me some times and multiple iterations before the final survey was ready! Thanks to my classmates for the survey help :)
What did I ask?
First of all, I wanted to know who was answering my survey, I asked the age and occupation in order for me to put the demographics into context. Gradually, I interrogated them about their learning habits, readings, podcasts to finally conclude questioning them on their time management and feelings about this topic.
I was very surprised by the little amount of people that regularly read or listened to podcasts! But this was confirmed by the fact that 65% feel like they don’t take enough time to learn new skills and deepen topics.
So following those questions, I asked how would they be able to read and learn on a more regular basis. Here are the most common answers: knowing where to search, how to trust internet, how to filter the overload amount of suggestions, where to gather all channels in one, how to set goals, how to create to do lists, how to ask their network for help and the main one was how to allocate specific time for learnings.
This survey gave me precious information, it was challenging to get to more than 100 answers but it was very helpful in order to continue my project! And I am proud I suceded to gather 113 answers :)
From there, I analyzed my survey data and I came out with my interview questions. They were more detailed, I created prompt questions that would help me to learn more about people’s habit when they want to learn more on a topic. I conducted 8 interviews with 6 people outside the class and two in my class.
Here are some questions I asked: Tell me about what you think is missing when you are trying to get more information on a topic ? How do you find articles based on what your interests are? Do you feel you don’t take time enough to enjoy some readings, watching videos, or listening to podcasts?Tell me more how you would do to manage your time better?Would you like to show people what you learn, what you read or listen to as strava does and get “kudo”?
Those interviews were very insightful! People were happy to answer and it felt more like a conversation than a questionary. I got to discover many channels for book suggestions, articles recommendations, google chrome extension but all those option are confusing and people are not really sure where to focus in order to find good learning mediums.
What my interviewees mentioned is, first of all, the lack of relevant recommendations. They don’t know if Google search can be trusted or if the articles that appear first are just because the author paid to appear first. Secondly, it takes time to find the good article or to choose between the overload of content. And finally, people struggle to manage their time, to allocate specific time for learnings and to take time for readings!
After gathering all those take aways on Miro, I created some clusters in order to visualize what were the main pain points:
- Time management
- Filtering the overload of information.
- All recommendation channel in one.
- Network help, sharing.
How might we statement
From there, I defined my How might we statement: How might we help people reaching their learnings goals by optimizing their research in terms of readings, podcasts, videos, talks?
What people do today?
People willing to take time to learn more about different topics, they struggle to schedule their day and they don’t know where to look for trustable sources, grouped under different categories.
My persona
After defining this, I could think about my persona, who is this person I will help, what are her behaviors, attitudes, challenges and motivations Let me introduce you to….Belen!
She is 26 yo and she is currently hired at Inditex in Human resources for her first job. She is very busy, loves after work, party, gym and she is lacking organization to fit, readings, podcasts, personal growth in her routine. She is passionate about psychology and would love to learn more about. She is lost in this amount of articles, books suggestion and she is tired to look for the best one! She is not trusting Google as she believe it is biased. She know a lot of website for recommendations but she wished there was one that would gather everything in one.
Now that Belen is alive, I could start sketching what my app would look like!
CRAZY 8s
My first crazy 8s did not convince me but the second one looked a bit more realizable:
I had a clear idea about the features I wanted and on how it would be designed. However it took me 3 crazy 8s to find out what it would approximately looks like.
Now….Figma time!
To bring my prototype to life and especially to test it, I needed to prototype it on Figma with interactions. It has to be intuitive, simple and it should be smooth and easy to navigate. This part was challenging because even if it feels logical for you it is not always the same logic for the user.
Once I had the first prototype, I started usability testing. I conducted 5 usability tests. I learnt a lot and it helped me realized so many details I couldn’t see, icons that were not clear for everyone, buttons too light, a flow that was not obvious or some missing screen that would help the user to navigate through the app. Listening and taking notes from those feedbacks, I iterated and iterated and iterated again and again.
Trust me, iterations are super important! When you are focusing too much on your prototype, it is important to test it with users. I changed a lot of features and details in order to create a greater experience and a more intuitive one.
LEARNINGS
Research, research and research, this would be one of my main takeaway! Don’t start a project on your own assumptions. I started like this when my teacher told me to be careful and to confirm my idea with some deeper research.
What are my main learnings from this project?
- Benchmarking helps also to understand people’s pain point! Discovering apps that are similar or websites, it is useful to imagine what is already existing and what is actually missing.
- How usability tests are leading to many iterations and how important they are!
- Next time, I would do more screens for more interactions and to make it even more clear!
Thank you for reading. Please do not hesitate to give feedback 🤓
