Dun - Planning for success

People often find it hard to start working on their personal goals or to stay motivated enough to see their goals to completion.

I worked on a team of three UX Designers to visualize a mobile app that helps users automatically plan and accomplish their personal goals.

My Process

User Research

Gained insights into  how users plan for and accomplish their personal goals

Definition

Defined the user persona and problem statement

Ideation

Brainstormed solutions, ideated user journey and analyzed competitors

Prototyping

Designed wireframes, style guide, Mid-Fi and iOS Prototypes

User Testing

User tested prototypes and iterated design

User Research

For this app, we focussed on professionals who like to work on personal goals.  I conducted interviews with 5 such users with the following goals:

1. To understand what kind of goals people are trying to achieve
2. To understand how people’s process is different from a winning strategy to achieve their goals
3. To understand why people aren’t achieving their goals

Interviewees reported finding it hard to start work on their goals but then found it easier as they started seeing results. Most of them failed to achieve their goals if they broke any SMART goal principle (which focuses on keeping goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound).

"I feel a great sense of inertia before I start working on my goals. However, it gets easier when I start noticing my progress."

"I failed when I set my expectations too high."

"I focus on a long term goal and then plan backwards from a target date. However, I fail when I don’t adhere to my schedule as I get busy with other things."

Definition

We used our research to synthesize the main user persona of our app - Dun.

We then defined the main problem we were trying to address with this app.

We believe that by automatically building personalized strategies that help people meet their goals, we will help ambitious and motivated people easily actualize their goals and make them more productive and fulfilled in the process.

Ideation

We used the I Like, I Wish, What If technique to list out a range of ideas that would help users accomplish their goals. These ideas were categorized based on  originality and ease of implementation.

The most relevant ideas were highlighted in an ideal user journey map.

An extensive analysis of similar products in the market showed us where Dun had the competitive edge.

Prototyping & User Testing

Each of us created sketches based on the ideal User Journey. We then used dot voting to select the best ideas. These were compiled into a Lo-Fi prototype for an initial round of testing.

We performed an initial round of testing on this Lo-Fi prototype. Our feedback was categorized per the chart below.

We used this feedback to iterate our Mid-Fi and iOS prototypes.

We created a style guide to lend a more uniform look to our prototype.

Some key features of our iOS prototype are highlighted below.

Profile to view your long term goals, streaks and achievements

Schedule to highlight your daily tasks and goals

Feed to view relevant information, share updates and see what your friends are up to

Key Takeaways

Through this project, I learnt how to contribute as a UX Designer on a high functioning team.  We were able to get the most out of our time by successfully engaging in Design Sprints to solve a problem for users - namely encouraging them to work towards their personal goals.