MonotaskerStart and finish tasks from every channel.

Problem Statement

In multitasking environments, frequent distractions and competing priorities make it challenging to complete tasks. Many people are still expected to multitask in order to move ahead in their careers - even though research shows that true “multitasking” is cognitively impossible.

Research

Research

GOALS

• I want to understand more about disruptions in the workplace.

• I want to understand more about how people feel about multitasking.

• I want to understand what gets in the way of people getting things done.

Research

METHOD

• Online survey

• In person interviews

Key Insights From Survey

95% said they are required to multitask at their work in order to succeed

85% said they were disrupted more than three times a week

0% said they used wearable technology to keep track of tasks

Key Insights From Interviews

Channels are a big deal

Disruptions come from everywhere

Waiting wastes time

Competitive Review

I chose six existing competitors and reviewed them on the following five categories:

• Social/Collaborative

• Ability to track tasks

• Time keeping

• Omnichannel

• Usability

Results of Competitive Review

Direct Indirect

OneTask 👌/💩 iCal 👌

SingleTask 👌 Wunderlist 💎

ShotClock 💎 Trello 💎

Results of Competitive Review

• ShotClock was best mono tasking app, with a really useful countdown feature

• Wunderlist and Trello both had excellent integrations with Slack and Asana

Affinity map

Affinity mapping showed where trends existed in research and created a platform for creating an accurate persona.

Demographics

Behaviors

Pain Points

Goals

Persona

DrewAge: 27 Relationship: Single Occupation: Associate Designer Income: 65,000

• To get all his work done • To make his boss and other stakeholders

pleased • To have a sense of priority • To seamlessly transition from divergent to

convergent thinking

• Frequent interruptions • Gets sucked into a social media

wormhole sometimes • Receives requests from lots of

different channels • Everyone thinks that the thing they

need you for should be your number one priority

• His team’s priorities change, and sometimes he works on things that end up not mattering at all

• His attention span is short

• Uses lots of different apps and techniques to keep track of work

• Tends to use a variety of SAAS applications to manage communication and projects

GOALS

HABITS

PAIN POINTS

“If I can’t see it, I will forget it”

Design

MVP Feature List

Based on the needs of my persona and the results of my competitive review, here are the core features I decided Monotasker would need:

• An ability to import tasks from other applications

• An ability to display only the task that you are working on at any given time

• An ability to see what the people you work with are working on right now

Information Architecture

I decided that a Hub and Spoke layout for the screens would make it as easy to create and start tasks, because the user would never be more than a tap away from the home screen where they can create new tasks or start tasks already in their cue.

Early Sketches

Adding a task from the inbox

Seeing team dashboard

Adding a new task and starting a task session

Critique

An open card sort revealed unnecessary steps in the process of using monotasker, specifically adding tasks from an “inbox”.

Initial Wireframes

Using Sketch and Invision, I was able to develop these initial wireframes.

User Testing

User testing revealed that there was no need to signify imported tasks with greyed out text, but showing where tasks were imported from was a feature that users wanted, along with text indicating how much time has elapsed vs. how much remains to be done.

V2V1

User Testing

User testing also revealed that the bars indicating finished tasks on the bottom of the circle in V1 didn’t provide any helpful information for the user. Getting rid of the lower half of the circle simplified the interface, placing more focus on the task at hand.

V1 V2

User Testing

Users suggested including images of team mates to indicate who was working on what task would be a helpful and easy way to identify who was working on what project.

V1 V2

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Initial Designs

After compiling all available research, here were the initial designs I created for the Monotasker UI