Design Process

We set out to understand the problem workers face with multitasking by consulted 16 participants in total including 4 workplace productivity experts, Ricard Hidalgo, Kate Thompson, Mary Czerwinski, and Shamsi Iqbal.

Researching the Problem

The modern workforce is shifting towards more people choosing full time self employment. There will be 42 million self-employed workers in America alone by 2020. Multitasking is an essential part of modern work life, and especially for self-employed individuals. However, multitasking is unavoidable and costly for productivity.

At this stage we needed to define both the audience and the context. Because of these challenges and trends, we saw an unique opportunity to create a tool for self-employed information workers who need to multitask and switch between different engagements on a regular basis.

What we learned

1. The opportunity cost of blocking distractions is high
Many people have commitments which require them to always be available, and thus can’t just simply block out all the communications channel. This ties back to the point about multitasking we discussed at the beginning of the presentation.
2. High degree of multitasking and context switching
We also learned that self-employed people like Erin, especially freelancers, have a tendency to multitask and switch context often. They do so because they are on their own most of the time, which requires them to manage multiple different types of work.
3. Productivity is highly personal
We also learned that productivity is very personal, and this is seemingly true for everyone, not just self-employed people. We found this out when we asked people what is a productive day for them, and the answers are all over the places.
4. Existing tools are not tailored for multitasking
Most productivity tools on the market are not tailored for unpredictable work patterns that require frequent context switching. Even fewer try to address the issue of multitasking.

Competitive analysis

We looked at existing productivity and context management softwares to analysize existing solutions that tries to address this problem. The list includes Microsoft Focus Assist, Cold Turkey, FocusMe, Hocus Focus, Mindful Browsing, OmniFocus, and others. What we learned is that most of these products tries to address productivity and multitasking by blocking out distractions or preventing users from context switching.

One standout was the Virtual Desktop functionality on Windows 10. But what we realized was that Virtual Desktop is not often used by users because it is very time consuming to create and sort applications into the different desktops. We saw an opportunity to introduce AI as a way of automating this process. Specifically Virtual Desktop does context switching very well, but context building is time consuming, and they don't tackle context keeping at all.

Windows 10 Virtual Desktop

Defining the strategy

At this point we needed to generate ideas that fulfills the following roles — they need to address the problem of multitasking for our target audience of self-employed individuals. The product needs to be distinct from similar competitors. The design needs to be aligned with the use case of our user persona Erin. Based on the competitive analysis, we determined that the product needs to be able to build context quickly, keep the context, and also switch between these user-built contexts.

Most of the existing tools try to address this at a tactical level, such as Calendar for managing your schedule, and Trello and Asana for tracking and managing tasks. So what we decided was to focus on the strategy level. We want to create a strategic platform for people to apply their personal task management tactics.

Information architecture

Before we started building out the prototypes we first had to define the hierarchy of the app.

Low fidelity prototype

What we tested

Our objective for this prototype was to validate both the design concept, as well as the core features. So we created a video for participants to validate our design concept. The video follows the day in the life of a typical Chiron user - Ricardo, a freelance architect. I defined the specific story within the prototype, and advocated for the core features. Mengxiao, Sakshat, and I collaborated on the prototype using Figma, and I produced the video using AfterEffects.

The concept validation video that we showed to participants for feedback.

What we learned

We definitely had some issues with the framing and storytelling in the video. The good news is we did receive validation for the overarching concept. However the value of the core features were brought into question.

Usability testing

What we did

We made a number of changes to the prototype in this iteration. We included a plugin marketplace to provide further personalization to the platform. We reworked the summary page and changed it to "last opened applications". We also updated the visual design using Microsoft's Fluent design system. Since Chiron is being branded as a Windows feature, it made sense for us to leverage the existing design system of Windows.

We interviewed four participants in total to perform four main tasks. The prototype consisted of a "main application" in which you could view the timeline and project archive, and a "quick view" mode where you could create and switch between different activity containers.

What we learned

We started them off on the overlay screen and asked them to navigate to the timeline and view a different version of their project. Our participant Whitney literally interacted with everything on the page except “Open Chiron”. And she said,

Also, we received feedback that the functionalities of these two parts were overlapped, but the visual inconsistency made them look like a light theme and a dark theme for the same functionalities. Because of this, we merged the overlay and the main application together in our high fidelity prototype, with a shared visual language.

Our participants really couldn’t agree on whether the timeline should go left to right or right to left. So instead we decided to orient the timeline from top to bottom instead, with top being the most recent.

Whitney compared Chiron to Virtual Desktop and noticed the similarities. We asked her what she thought about the current project creation flow, and she said,

As a next step, we want to make the project creation process “smarter”, and introduce a way to automate the project creation and categorization process. In the final prototype, we have a suggestions section in the side bar that automatically generates groupings for these active applications.

Final deliverables

In the final deliverable, we incorporated the learnings from the two previous rounds of testing, and consolidated the features to address the three design objectives of context building, context keeping, and context switching. Since the terminology is repetitive, we renamed them as "environment building", "context keeping", and "activity switching".

We revisited Erin's story, and the final prototype is done from the point of view of Erin, who needs to balance her managerial work with personal obligations. Erin is planning her wedding and honeymoon, in addition to tracking the status of her employees and clients.

UX Flow - Load a save state

UX Flow - Create a new activity

UX Flow - Create a memo

Next steps

The final deliverables were passed off to Mike Premi from Intel's Artificial Intelligence Innovation Lab for future development. Mary Czerwinsky and Shamsi from Microsoft Research showed interest in the findings we uncovered, and we are in the process of passing off the findings to Microsoft as well.

The following are some highly requested features that we didn't have time to implement into the V1 since they did not directly align with one of our three design pillars of Build, Keep, or Switch.

Reflection

Storytelling through personas

We faced a lot of difficulty communicating the idea succinctly. Using Erin's real life story and experience as a vehicle for explaining the concepts was much more effective.

Using data to guide product and design

Our users wanted a lot of different things, we learned to use data gathered from both ethnographic studies, and usability tests to narrow down on which features we should prioritize and which ones we should leave behind.