During user research concentrated on an ongoing issue, it was common for us to discover new problem areas
As we delved into the challenge of understanding students' thoughts and behaviors regarding overdue tasks and those they aim to complete today or this week, we identified the above problem areas among users.
After this discovery, I conducted 8 semi-structured interviews with users who voluntarily participated in the research to solve for these problems. We ensured to even out the number of inactive and active users based on the total amount of tasks they had added to Edlyft on Track
The interviews were conducted over one week and the qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed through affinity mapping (shown below) over the course of a week
Increase growth in key metrics
1. Completed tasks
2. Added/edited tasks
3. Total weekly active users who have added ≥5 tasks
Understand students thoughts and behaviors when it comes to starting tasks, breaking down tasks, and making progress on tasks
How do students breakdown working on a task and how do they track progress for multiple tasks?
Half of the users put an upcoming important date in the later tab when asked to add an upcoming important date
Some users thought that adding an upcoming date in the calendar would make it appear in the later tab
We removed the distinction between Later and Upcoming Important Dates by removing the right Upcoming Important Dates panel all together
We also rebranded ourselves to be more elegant, welcoming, and vibrant to mimic our most important users, students
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Users prioritize career prep tasks and classwork based on due dates
In order to visually associate time to their tasks, users would manually type in due dates into the task itself
One user stated, "It would be nice to see how all the tasks land date wise based on when they are due.”
SOLUTIONS
To align with our findings, I added optional due and start dates to tasks. Additionally, I emphasized the Today column through size assisting the user in focusing on their current workload.
CHALLENGE
Setting similar functional behavior in 3 different types of views — Board, Calendar, and Agenda — to the due date
In Board View (Home), the due date is highlighted in a bright blue pill for increased visual prominence. In Calendar and Agenda View, tasks with a due date were placed under the respective day, while tasks without due dates are placed under the day they were created
Users can also set start dates (3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks) to shift tasks accordingly to when the user should start the task, promoting proactive planning
For instance, setting a start date on a task that is due May 5 to 3 days moves the task to the Today column on May 2
Setting similar functional behavior in 3 different types of views — Board, Calendar, and Agenda — to the due date
In Board View (Home), the due date is highlighted in a bright blue pill for increased visual prominence
In Calendar View, tasks with a due date were placed under the respective day, while tasks without due dates are placed under the day they were created
In Agenda View, tasks with a due date were placed under the respective day, while tasks without due dates are placed under the day they were created
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Users would create duplicate tasks in all three columns to work on one particular task over a course of few days, but did not like having to do doing that
SOLUTIONS
Users mostly focused on a single task over several days, often breaking it down into smaller subtasks
We introduced a manual progress bar for tasks with selected due and start dates
Users easily adjust it to reflect their completion percentage, ensuring flexibility across various workflows, eliminating the need to break down tasks
To ensure accountability of users starting their tasks when intended, if progress has not been made on a task on the day of the start date, the progress bar turns red
CHALLENGE
Solving for how users would understand how the feature functions
Tooltips on the next login informed users of new features, and motivational tooltips appeared as features were used
Over the course of the research and implementation of new features, we saw a significant increase in product engagement. The number of tasks that were added/edited increased by over 11x and the number of tasks completed increased by over 14x
Our total amount of users signed up grew from 0 to 1,588 within 5 months and our number of active users (users who have added/edited ≥5 tasks) also increased by 340%