Monia: Productivity Application

Users are finding it difficult to constantly be productive due to the overwhelming nature of managing personal and professional work lives along with finding it difficult to stay on task due to a variety of internal and external distracting factors.

Build an application that gives users the tools they need in order to better understand their schedules from the highest to the lowest level. Along with assisting users with recommendations aimed at increasing their work/life balance and better understand how they deal with certain events with a journalling implementation.

Users are finding it difficult to constantly be productive due to the overwhelming nature of managing personal and professional work lives along with finding it difficult to stay on task due to a variety of internal and external distracting factors.

Build an application that gives users the tools they need in order to better understand their schedules from the highest to the lowest level. Along with assisting users with recommendations aimed at increasing their work/life balance and better understand how they deal with certain events with a journalling implementation.

I wanted to gather a better understanding of how users were effectively using their time in their days. I went in with the intent to test a hypothesis that users are restricting themselves in order to be productive, so one of my constraints was that this application would not restrict the user in anyway.

I interviewed 6 individuals within the age range of 18-30. Kept the following objectives in mind as I went into my interviews.

We want to know what the current pain points are that users are experiencing when dealing with slumps of productivity or general production.

We want to know what users are struggling with and find ways to enhance their current situations.

Identify User Goals and Aspirations

Productivity is an intentionally vague industry, task managers, personal management and calendars are present throughout.

Some apps keep it straight forward, they get one thing done and that is all they care for. Others, do a little bit of everything and act as a hub for you to customize (see Notion).

Too much choice or too little choice seems to be commonplace. Customization and personalization should be a key component to a productivity app due to no two people being the same.

We spoke to individuals that are young professionals, who are beginning to navigate the work place and blossom in their careers, specifically young adults in the age range of 18-28.

Allowed for us to ask follow ups and explore user motivations and goals more thoroughly.

Helped us to better understand user philosophies when it came to how the are adjusting to a new way of life and additional stressors.

Really hone in on what was important to users in their lifestyles and how they went about goal setting.

Calendar Implementation

People live and die by their calendars, but people often do not know what to do with themselves when they have some additional free time. These times will be useful to add in recommendations for users.

Motivation comes and goes in waves, some days you feel like a million bucks other days its a struggle to get out of bed. I want to make sure that our user comes to our app that may seem overwhelming at times, and be greeted with a positive message.

Our schedules are often constantly changing, being updated and shifted around. Adding new things should be simple and easy. And as you add new events, recurring ones will begin to learn from you and populate themselves.

Finding a way to juggle everything in your life is half the battle, this power balance will be front and center to push users to start making more time for other events outside of work.

After completing the first round of interviews I discovered 4 recurring pain points that were brought up in someway in each conversation.

People live and die by their calendars, but people often do not know what to do with themselves when they have some additional free time. These times will be useful to add in recommendations for users.

Motivation comes and goes in waves, some days you feel like a million bucks other days its a struggle to get out of bed. I want to make sure that our user comes to our app that may seem overwhelming at times, and be greeted with a positive message.

Our schedules are often constantly changing, being updated and shifted around. Adding new things should be simple and easy. And as you add new events, recurring ones will begin to learn from you and populate themselves.

Finding a way to juggle everything in your life is half the battle, this power balance will be front and center to push users to start making more time for other events outside of work.

People live and die by their calendars, but people often do not know what to do with themselves when they have some additional free time. These times will be useful to add in recommendations for users.

Motivation comes and goes in waves, some days you feel like a million bucks other days its a struggle to get out of bed. I want to make sure that our user comes to our app that may seem overwhelming at times, and be greeted with a positive message.

Our schedules are often constantly changing, being updated and shifted around. Adding new things should be simple and easy. And as you add new events, recurring ones will begin to learn from you and populate themselves.

Finding a way to juggle everything in your life is half the battle, this power balance will be front and center to push users to start making more time for other events outside of work.

Utilized a Card Sort to gather insights on how users would perceive different topics that would be spread throughout the application. Gathered information from a remote closed card sort, with individuals that fit the same demographic as our previous research.

Results from the card sort gave me insight into how to properly set up the application to allow for easier use on first pick up. Created an initial Sitemap based off the results.

After sketching through various options, I digitized the following screens to a Mid Fidelity. Wanting to make sure I created the necessary pages for the flows mentioned above.

After putting everything together, It became apparent that I needed to prioritize the screens I was going to be taking to a higher fidelity due to time limitations. It was important to understand how users would interaction with the portions of the app that were more task heavy and I as I moved forward to establishing the branding elements I cut the User Sign Up Flow and opted in to test a flow focused on Journaling.

Has anyone ever told you how pretty you are?

Landed on the name Monia, the root word of Harmonia, who happens to be a Greek God of Harmony and Concord. I found this to be fitting as the app is focused on helping users establish a better work life balance and teach them about themselves and their habits, while having some AI features for the recommendation system that would allow for the app to feel like it was an assistant.

I wanted the app to feel inviting and relaxing. Due to the level of personalization the user will be able to have, the palette here relys on a set range for the saturation the colors to help the app keep a consistent feel throughout. The pastel colors are meant to be relaxing and inviting.

Along with this we will be utilizing illustrations through out of various activities to give the application a energetic feel. We want you to come to the app as a safe space and these elements will assist in creating that mental security while avoiding being distracting from the users regular flow of work and events.

Putting everything together the Mid Fidelity served as a fantastic guide to continue building out the more refined interface. The Mid Fidelity screens previously shown had some of the branding elements already present which allowed for a quicker transition to getting the Prototype up and ready.

We were testing 3 different flows, all focused on getting the user to be more aware of what they are doing during events and how they would be utilizing the app on a day to day basis.

In a world where you have more things going on than you know what to do with, you are bound to have multiple calendars you are managing. We want to make sure these are easy to switch between and feel natural to the user.

Events and tasks go hand in hand at Monia. We want to help you break up these larger events into actionable tasks that make the days feel less overwhelming and bring a certain structure to your days.

Reflection is key at Monia. You are going to go through a lot, and we want you to be able to look back on the progress you've made throughout your journey of life. You events, tasks, notes and journal prompts will be kept in a space for you to go back to.

After the first round of testing wrapped up it was apparent we were moving in the right direction! The flows felt natural and the mix of productivity and reflection were met very well by the user base. There was of course things to be improved on and tweaked, however we were at a great starting point.

Taking anything from 0 to 1 is always a daunting process. Filling the mind with questions about what the general response to it will be, if you are providing a true value from your creation and so many other thoughts that can cloud your way. This project really provided me the ability to get out of my comfort zone, work with a vast color palette and dive into a world that is itself quite overwhelming. Finding a way to differentiate myself in a world of other products was quite the challenge but I found the hybrid of manager + reflection to be a fantastic sweet spot.

This was also the first time I had run into significant delays that were due to testers not responding and lack of feedback initially. Which I was actually thankful for, it was yet another lesson that there are so many variables that are out of your control and I took it as a time for me to be able to be comfortable with the slower nature of this project as it was not something I had control over

I find the idea of Monia to be fascinating. We are all so busy as humans that things are bound to fall at the wayside, or we forget events are coming up, or we know they are happening but we get overwhelmed by the work leading up to these events. All this is taken in to consideration by Monia with the idea of utilizing AI to synthesize your own notes and events to give you personalized recommendations for better ways to go about those events, or with event creation automation that bases itself off your previous work flows. Opposed to being an application that you simply fill in, this app will feel like it is genuinely a helping hand in giving you more control of your life back and putting the user into a more Harmonious state.