Making Focus Feel Easier
An enhancement to an existing time-saving app (Opal) where me and two other students designed concepts to target students even more.
AT A GLANCE
College students already know their phones are distracting. The harder problem is actually doing something about it. They wanted help staying motivated, planning their time, and taking breaks without immediately falling back into scrolling.
I acted as a product designer along with 2 others focusing on the humanistic responses to cutting out time in their life, and how we as college students could add our perspective to better this app.
6 Indigo Awards
Across UX, Interaction, and Product Design
2 Chats with Opal
Presented our findings + solutions Opal's PM
REDESIGN OUTCOMES
Students don’t need another app telling them to focus
Make progress feel good: Tap Stickers
Tap Stickers turn consistent focus into visible progress through collectible gems, achievements, and rewards. Giving students a reason to come back and being able to physically move to "lock in".
Put the phone down: Break Suggestions
Instead of only telling students what not to do, we started suggesting what they could do instead. Because when you're told what to start with, freedom from your phone feels easier.
Know what’s next: Planning Calendar
A lightweight planning system brings tasks, focus sessions, and breaks into the same experience. Instead of bouncing between a planner and a focus app, students decide what they need to do and immediately start doing it.
KEY MOMENTS
Bringing it to the users
We got 23 participants to test the experience. Rather than validating everything we had made, testing showed us exactly where the product still wasn’t clear enough. Also, being surrounded by our target demographic, getting a few minutes was simple.
Scanning needed more guidance
Participants weren’t always sure where or how to position their phone
New users needed more help
Some of the more advanced features weren’t immediately understandable
“Event” didn’t make sense.
Participants struggled with terminology throughout the interface.
IMPACT
Expected metrics to track
After finishing this assignment we wanted to document our findings and show off our product on LinkedIn. To our surprise, Opal commented and we started chatting. This turned into one coffee chat to another entire overview of our findings and proposals. If this were to ship, we would love to track this.
Adoption rate of users with the physical tap stickers
Percentage rate of users who attempt to take a break, but then leave for our suggestions
Adoption rate of planner and overall satisfaction with new features
REFLECTIONS
To take away into my next opportunity
Working on something so fast, being able to get eyes in front of a company, and getting recognition is a ton at once…
There's no need to reinvent the wheel, but there can be fixes
Going into this project needing to find an already existing app to redesign or build off of initially felt like a less powerful project. But, when it comes to apps like Opal, there are already so many on the market and Opal works, so being able to build off of it overall helped us focus.
Everyone is just a person
At the end of the day, after all the job titles and experience, the thing that we all have to remember is that we are all just people. While we thought there was no way this company would respond, they did! Taking that leap, or posting your wins is to people just like you, so do it!!
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