What and Why Design
In this project, I am designing a time management product for mainly myself, and anyone who suffers from a similar issue of procrastinating and wasting time. The reason why I am designing this product is that I keeping myself focused and concentrated while working is usually not an easy task for me, and most time management tool or timer does not solve this problem for me well.
Design Framework
- Persuasive Design: Avoid distraction and procrastination, and encourage concentration while working
- Enchanted Object: An enchanted timer to your laptop
- Performance Goal: Improve and add multi-functionality to current timers
Design Process
I conducted the design process by finding out and understanding the facts about my own working style as well as the design strategy of some other products, and I am listing them as the following:
– Facts about the client (i.e. me)
- Easily distracted (Zhihu, Youtube, etc.)
- Go away from the laptop (get water, daydreaming, take a nap)
- Start working is harder than keep working
– Facts about the existing apps (e.g. tomato clocks)
- Fixed tomato time: always 30 mins
- False fulfillment: celebrate for you even if you took a nap. Not able to tell whether you actually spend the time working or doing nothing.
- Is itself a distraction: the ticking noise and the constant display showing how much time is left
- Need to set up for each task
- Unnatural timing strategy: imposes the idea that people work by a 30 min of working + 5 min of the rest cycle
My design and the design choices
Based on all the information above, I decided to create a device that does the following:
- Reflects the actual amount of time spent working
- Allows a natural working style with random rests from time to time, but forces the user to make such time up.
- Provides triggers for working and celebrates work done.
- Blocks access to the websites that distract me the most
To achieve the goals and functions as stated above, the following are several key design choices that I made.
- Use a shining and unsettling red light as the trigger for start working
- Celebrates the work done by generating a pleasant blue light
- The device detects working by monitoring mouse movements and keyboard typing.
- The light’s color and numbers accumulate when the user is working and decreases when the user is not being productive, thus encouraging the user to work more and idle less.
- Calls up a third-party software that can block access to given websites
- Designed a new timing strategy:
- Timing according to the time I would like to work and how efficient I would like to be (i.e. laziness)
- The speed of lights increasing or decreasing is based on the above two parameters. Therefore, it will allow me to idle by sacrificing the number of lights that I have accumulated.
- In general, we have the following equation:
- NumOfLights/intensity = Time working – Time idling
- In this way, the NumOfLights/intensity only reflects the actual amount of time spent working.
Refection
Based on the feedback that I received, the project is successful in terms of making goofing around hard. However, the most significant concern about the outcome of my project is whether using lights provides enough motivation to work. On the one hand, I agree that different people can be motivated in different ways, and I also confess that I am not entirely sure whether using lights as motivation will be a long-lasting strategy for myself. Therefore, it is true that more motivation strategy should be explored to improve my project. On the other hand, personally, I believe that the lack of a strong concentration motivation can be somewhat compensated by the increased difficulty to idle.
Apart from the current design itself, it is also interesting to consider the future forms of the device. In this way, we can explore its potential of scaling up, and fit into a commercial agenda. For instance, it can be embedded into the laptop or a laptop case. Meanwhile, such a design can be extended to other digital devices, such as an Ipad of a phone.
Demo