Phase III:Design

25Apr08

Information architecture

Following up from the last post, this time we are trying to find out how users organize and plan tasks. While other methods of information architecture are web-focused, we came up with our own idea of creating a scenario and let the users plan the activities in any way they feel relevant to themselves to suit our product. We wanted to know the structure and how the users planned their tasks so we know how we can design our planner.

Some of the results we had found after we let about 10 students to test out the scenario.
We discovered that some of the users would plan by assigning a time event to each task they need to complete. They also go by the urgency and importance of tasks needed to be completed such that they planned according to due dates. One of the students actually planned the tasks according to his principles and values such that he tried to complete the tasks according to what he deem as important first in his values.

Low-fidelity prototyping

These are some of the low-fidelity prototypes that we have come out from the results of the information organization that we had done. We based the requirements that the planner should help users prioritize their tasks effectively. We had an idea of using the four quadrants to “upgrade” the current to-do list we usually use to note down our tasks. We felt that the generic to-do list does not help users to prioritize their tasks, and only serve to tell users they have this list of tasks to do.

We had a page on personal mission statement in Life section to let the users to define their roles and values in their life so that they could plan their activities and tasks with accordance to these values. The next page shows the draft of the 4 quadrant idea that we tried to utilize in our planner.

We thought of having the users to write down their tasks on pieces of stickers, and then stick these stickers onto the different sections of the quadrant to let them to arrange the tasks according the degree of urgency and importance.

The weekly roles page to let users to define their roles in their life such as a son, student etc) in a week so they can prioritize with reference to their values so they are able to have a balance life.

The weekly view has an additional prioritize tasks section right above the beginning of each day so that the users are able to write down their tasks when they do not know where to put them in the timeline.

This is the daily version of the planner with the timeline and a small to-do list. We also came out with another method other than the quadrant method which is to use colour stickers to rank the importance of each task so that the user would know at a glance which tasks are more importance and try to do them first.

Below is the another version of the weekly section with additional column for notes.

High-fidelity prototyping

Tada! Our high-fi prototype, the planner!

One of our group members went to get a felt like cloth from spotlight and sew the cloth to make the kind of the planner cover’s material that we intended to be. Added with the papers, ruler, and a detachable plastic cover with the quadrant to-do list slotted in. for the stickers, we were trying to look for transparent, plastic and writable kind. But we could only find colourful ones from bookshops, and we discovered the problem that it is easily to be smudged if written with a wet-based ink pen. So we just made do with the colourful stickers.

high-fidelity-prototype

After we let the user to try using the product, we discovered many problems. Mainly small details, like holidays, some boxes colour in the notes/memo section, adding in the dates and day etc. many of them said that the daily section is kinda redundant since we already have weekly and monthly, and having daily will make the planner to be very thick and it could make it difficult to be carried around.

Many of users said that the quadrant to-do list is a new and nice idea. They said that it is not something that they will use every single day but occasionally if needed. However, it is a useful function to be included in the planner. We also find that the red and the blue colour in the 2nd and 3rd quadrant have to be switched.

Overall, the planner cover is nice to hold and it is quite a good one.

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