Reminder app for ArtCenter students.

Research – Concept – Prototype

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Eighty percent of life is showing up.

— Woody Allen

My Role

30%

User Research

70%

User Interface Design

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timer

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Participatory Research

Public Survey

Starting with the broadest of strokes, I initiated my research by posting surveys around campus asking students what kinds of reminder they want to have on the app.

I quickly learned that beside getting reminders for their class time, students also want to be notified of other social and professional activities on campus.

I developed a subscription model for signing up to receive reminders and alerts for classes and events happening around campus.

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One of the most dreadful moment of my time at ArtCenter happened on week 15 when classes had ended but my morning alarms still went off.

— Jose G., Student

Students are more likely to arrive late to class after a ‘white night’ during midterms and finals.

— Shri J., Professor

Why would you need anything more than the default alarm clock app on your phone? *stares skeptically*

— Jae L., Student

Early Prototypes

Participatory Design

I asked several other students to jump in on impromptu co-design sessions where we made quick prototypes using pen & paper.

After several iterations, patterns started to emerge from the chaos.

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40%

Creating alarms

40%

Adjusting alarms

20%

Removing alarms

keyboard_arrow_up Distribution of time spent inside an alarm app

Economy of Scale

If I can help a student shave just 1 or 2 minutes off the time they'd spent preparing for school, imagine how much time would be saved for the entire student body, over the course of 8 terms?

Seeing the big picture, I aligned the project’s success metrics along 2 key performance indicators.

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Efficiency

  • Measured in the amount of time spent completing a task
  • Repetitive ‘chores’ should be avoided
  • Scalable, working model for 95% of users

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Ease of Use

  • Best represented by the number and complexity of steps required to complete core tasks
  • Each step should entail little to low mental effort
  • Smooth learning curve among new users

keyboard_arrow_up Key performance indicators

Task #1

Adding alarms

keyboard_arrow_down Before: adding all alarms took 6+ steps

Login
Navigate to schedule
View course schedule
Create alarm
Edit alarm
Finish

keyboard_arrow_down After: the same task only required 3 steps

Login
Edit alarms
Finish
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One Account To Rule Them All

Instead of using yet another account to manage alarms, the Awake app would utilize students’ current ArtCenter portal account. This SSO (single sign-on) solution elegantly streamlined the alarm creation process.

#1

Login to sync alarms

This is neat! I wonder why no one has thought of doing this before.
Dev, Product Design Student
#2

Form inspired by function

Beautifully designed alarms.
Teri, Environmental Design Student

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An alarm app that notifies you of class time

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with zero or minimal setup.

Awake

Being on time is the first indicator of professionalism.

keyboard_arrow_up Be up on time

keyboard_arrow_up Be better at what you do

Be prepared keyboard_arrow_down

Sign in with your ArtCenter student account to sync class schedules.

Review and adjust alarms to fit your personal needs.

The app learns your waking up pattern and helps you make proper improvements.

How it works

An alarm clock with memory.

Adaptive Intensity learns your waking up pattern and helps make adjustments to improve it.

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Heavy Snoozer

Rapid Riser

Lethargic Laggard

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

6:30 am

6:45 am

7:00 am

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Wake up time

7:15 am

7:30 am

No more rogue alarm!
Alarm Sync keeps your alarms synchronized with every new term to come.

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Terms

Alarms

Students