Reminder App User Research & Design – 1

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATION

Using the Affinity diagram Method we synthesized the comments and behaviors of our interview participants and came to the following findings: All or most of our participants

• Use Calendar Apps for Reminder and to-do’s: All participants used one of the Calendar apps on their phones or computers to keep track of their tasks and Reminders. The participants talked about time, date and sometimes locations for most of their reminders.
  • Participants want to associate their tasks, to-dos, and events with at least a date, at times the location and time.

• Keep a manual To-do list or Calendar: All participants kept some kind of list of things to do in a notebook, on post-its notes in their wallet or stuck in the purse
  • Users like the quick note-taking, where you do not need to enter a date, time, alert, etc. but they still want that entry to be in someplace accessible so they can do not forget about it, for example, a friend telling you an address to a meeting place. There is a need for quick notes function which is dynamic and saves details like time and location and prompts to create an event.

• Review their schedule at the start or end of the day: We observed that every participant reviewed their schedule the night before, the morning of, or even multiple times during the day. They also reviewed their week or month
  • Users need to see how their day looks like at a glance on the home screen of the app, and a swipe to see the next days. They could also receive notifications on a set time, 9 pm for example, with their agenda for the next day.

• Set Notifications to their Apps: We noticed that each participant used the Alert or Notification feature on their apps set half to one hour before their task. Most had to set them each time (or forgot to set alert) because it isn’t a default feature on their calendar app
  • Alerts or Notifications should be a default for each task, with a possibility to turn it off and change the time of notification
• Do not list recurring activities to their lists or Calendar: Participants did not list recurring usual activity to their lists, people only noted things that are not part of their regular schedule and something they would forget.
  • Each of these activities needs to have a default notification or Alert.

• Would like to enter an event quickly: Participants that use the Calendar App on iPhone expressed that they have to go through multiple steps to enter an event, the process is also prone to a lot of errors.
  • An app that has a simple quick procedure to add an event, will be helpful. One idea is to have a dynamic text field for title, that populated time or date field when typed (with a capability to edit)
• Kept a long term list somewhere: Many participants kept a long-term list of things to do, something that they need to finish in a couple of weeks or a month.
  • an option to add these lists or other lists would be helpful

• Would like a Collaboration between Apps: All participants in one way or the other expressed the need for App collaboration, for example, a way to
  • Add a note in the ‘Notes’ app to the reminder
  • Link to an email/ facebook event/ text message to my reminder.
  • Link a document or a website to my Reminder
    • These collaborations will make it easier for the user to stay on task and finish it when reminded, instead of getting distracted. For example, A user lists a reminder reply to an email and add a link to the email in the reminder, when he receives the reminder, a click to the link will open the email app with that email, he can click reply and finish his task. In the current scenario, the user opens the email app and searches the email that needed replying, where he could find another important email and gets distracted.

• Family member won’t check schedule:The other thing users mentioned are family members not using/ checking the schedule and have to be reminded.
  • Having the functionality to create Shareable lists that could be shared via texts or email quickly would be a good feature, the user should be able to schedule these reminders through email or texts, etc.

• Use Calendar sharing, but need more functionalities: Calendar sharing is used by most participants, they have a separate calendar for each family member, but that makes their own calendar very cluttered
  • Having the capability of creating a color-coded Task list for a child and an option of listing himself as a participant in an event will be helpful. For example, If Sarah has a PT meeting at her kid’s school, she needs to be present with her child and spouse, Sarah adds her spouse and herself as collaborators in her son’s task. The event will show up at each person’s schedule. On the other hand, if the child has testing inside the school, it will be on his shared calendar which Sarah can view (if shared) but it will not clutter her schedule for the day.