Overview
Scheduling tools are essential
I joined a design-focused project team for UC San Diego's Association for Computing Machinery as a UI/UX Designer. We had the choice to choose a topic for our project which would span winter quarter. We looked into tools that undergraduate students utilize in their daily lives and discovered how prevalent When2meet is. In the midst of balancing academics, work, and personal lives, scheduling tools are vital in their ability to help individuals stay on track. When2meet is a group scheduling tool that aids students in organizing group events for their classes, clubs, and more.
THE challenge
Underdeveloped user interface
When2meet isn't optimized for mobile use because of:
Excessive blank space
Small buttons and labels
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Alternative tools for scheduling
The goal of our secondary research was to discover the pros and cons of When2meet by conducting a competitive analysis to the features that worked and didn't work of similar scheduling platforms.
Google Calendar App
LettuceMeet
Doodle App
USER research
How do individuals schedule events?
We interviewed 12 users that consisted of mostly students that regularly use When2meet or other similar platforms to schedule meetings for projects, labs, and student organization events.
Our interviews were organized into three sections:
Pre-Task: Grasping users' basic familiarity with When2meet and other similar platforms
Tasks: Finding errors made by users when creating events and adding/editing availability
Post-Task: Summarizing user experience of completing tasks on When2meet, as well as qualitative data and ideas for improving When2meet
Here are some common user errors that we discovered:
USER PERSONAS
Synthesizing the pain points
Analyzing the research we conducted, we created user personas to summarize user pain points.
THE PROBLEM
How might we improve the mobile experience of When2meet by minimizing user errors and improving navigation?
BRAINSTORMING & IDEATION
What features do users need?
We created sketches to brainstorm ways to redesign When2meet, focusing on these key features:
Use of entire screen to avoid misclicks, which allows for enlarged buttons and labels
Three different views (7-day, 3-day, 1-day) for easier navigation and reduced scrolling
User flow
To visualize the pathway that we wanted users to take with When2meet, we created a user flow that included each page that the user would encounter. This involved the new feature of the three different calendar views.
LO-FI PROTOTYPING
A new mobile interface and user flow
While prototyping, our goal was to design a mobile interface that was visually appealing and had a coherent user flow. One of our biggest challenges was discovering a way to fit all of the required features of When2meet onto the screen to utilize all of the available space but not clutter the screen.
USABILITY TESTING
Thoughts and suggestions
To acquire more feedback, we interviewed 12 users to gain insight into what they thought about our lo-fi prototype, gathering their input on the implemented features.
OUR SOLUTION
Easy mobile group scheduling
Solves the problem of the screen not filling up the entire screen by redesigning When2meet to a be vertically-orientated and more mobile-friendly
Enlarged buttons and labels to minimize action-based slips
Different views (week, 3-day, day) to prevent users from accidentally tapping on the wrong time when adding availability
REFLECTION
My main takeaways
The beauty of design
As one of the primary UI/UX Designers of my group, I highly enjoyed creating the final redesign using Figma. In the end, I was really proud of the final product, despite continuing to sharpen my skills with using Figma. I felt motivated to improve and become a better designer.
Striking gold from user research
As this project was one of my first major UI/UX projects, I learned just how critical user research is for the design process. I discovered how it's essential to go through the user research process unbiased and with an open-mind because of how you never know what important discoveries you could make.
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