I was unsure as to how to start this week's homework. So I started by reviewing what I did the week prior and by following the feedback I received from our teacher.
Feedback
- Be specific about harmony. What's the percentage work and life you need?
I think that "harmony" means different things to different people. Therefore, I think that the first step for the user to take would be to assign a priority (that can vary at a later time) to "work / study" and "private life" in percentages. More than that, I think that I would like to concentrate on achieving long-term goals regardless of whether they belong to the "work" or "life" group. I think having the goals in mind will sort out the ideal ratio between the two for each individual and learn over time what works best.
- Are you focusing on everyday achievement or long term achievement?
Long term goals that will be achieved by short term consistent behaviors that will later become habitual.
- Group the interview results. This will help you identify broader themes.
Group A: Focus
-"No, as much as I would love to have a balance between the things I want to do and must do, I always jumble them up and end up not completing both. There are always certain things that I want to do that I feel lazy doing them and end up spending that time in other ways."
-"I have learned to do things that feels good to me, knowing that I have to flow with the life, and not to stress out with a lot of things to do."
-"Some weeks it’s more of the “want to do” like seeing my partner or friends and some weeks it’s more of the “should do” like applying to jobs and talking to family."
-"No, I give too much importance and priority to the things I want to do rather than the ones I must do. Because of that I have no balance within my personal time"
-"I have tried by myself, but I would say lack of consistency has been the main issue.."
Group B: Time
-"Not at all. I procrastinate and then I’m pressured which also affects my personal life."
-"in current times you should work for productivity and not for hours"
-"There are still some things I would like to do more of (as well as things I should do more of) but I keep procrastinating them."
-"The only thing that messes up that balance is me wasting time. I feel like there would be that balance, but sometimes I procrastinate a lot, making it harder."
-"No, not completely. I feel some things that I want to do are being constantly relegated."
-"Out of procrastination and anxiety of having to face the next step in the process."
Group C: Priorities
-"Now I’m clear about priorities and despite the fact that I work hard, I find the time to pursue hobbies, spend time with family and friends and not feel guilty about it."
-" I defined priorities about my private life and work every day"
- "No, feel I have much work and not much private life"
-"I’ve studied too much in my life but lived too little in terms of self-fulfillment"
-"I know what I feel must do but I usually postpone important ones."
Group D: Habits
-"I think currently I have more habits that are turning out to be a bit more detrimental to my future goals."
-"I have two specific habits that although I don’t want them in my life, is difficult to eliminate them , sometimes start but give up easily"
-" I could definitely improve my habits to improve my life."
-"enough that keep me on track even if not at the pace I would prefer."
-"The majority of my habits are too focused on my personal entertainment."
-"I could change some to improve and acquired new ones."
-"I tend to lack discipline in personal and work areas that set back the tasks I have to achieve my long term goals."
-"If I see the result, I tend to stick to the habit more."
Group E: Miscellaneous
- "If i'm following through a habit, one thing that i find most apps lack is ability to cross off days. Like if i'm following a workout routine that requires me to workout daily. I want to have a calendar where I can cross the day indicating that I have finished another day."
-"More than planning like have a set of achieve goals for each day"
-"Consolidation of data and user friendly-ness."
This exercise of grouping the feedback was very helpful. I realized that some people had trouble achieving work - personal life harmony but even those that had achieved that struggled with the musts-shoulds-wants of their personal life.
- Your experience map is vague, it's hard to picture what this person is going through.
Be specific. Have a specific persona (which you have) with a concrete scenario with a goal.
I've re-done these to be more specific:
This week's assignment
1. Generate lots of ideas based on 'what if' (push yourself further than our in-class crazy 8 exercise)
- An online service that helps people see their growth and the shifts in perspective that they've achieved.
- Help people break through the paralysis of choice by randomizing tasks and assigning them more or less time depending on priorities.
- Service where you create a profile for the habits and goals you want to achieve and get weekly prompts from a life coach or therapist.
- Object that serves as a touchstone to remind you to do a particular action until it becomes habit (can only do one habit per object).
- Family/friends connection service where family/friends remind you and encourage you to continue making habits and/or reaching for your goals.
This site: https://goalbuddy.io/goal-setting/
Guides you through a process of setting up goals and finding someone to be your support system. There are some forms to print and fill out and a series of steps to follow.
This article: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/journeypage-the-ultimate-goal-support-system.html
Describes a site called JourneyPage but it must've been disconnected because it's no longer working.
"JourneyPage helps you get a jump start on some of your larger goals by creating visibility and accountability. JourneyPage lets you create a web page dedicated to your goal(s) and even add a project champion. Additionally, JourneyPage allows you to post what tasks you would like to accomplish daily. At the end of the day you report back to JourneyPage and update the status of your goals. This is a great way to share your progress with your friends and family. If you had your loved ones checking in on your status, would your productivity skyrocket? Please let us know what you think of JourneyPage in the comments."
Describes a project by some coworkers where they set yearly goals and make boards for them on Trello to track and share them. They based their structure on the WeightWatcher methods in order to achieve other goals unrelated to weight loss. They also use Slack and Google Hangouts in order to support each other on their goals and keep on track.
- Accountability social media. doesn't have to be digital. But a place or app where people that have the same goals can be matched and share progress and support each other. Can be done with multiple goals.
This app already does that: https://www.coach.me/
- An app that slowly, progressively and consistently trains you to build a habit that lasts long term.
- Service / app that helps to break down goals into smaller achievable steps.
2. Choose one idea
I had a lot of trouble picking an idea, I felt like a lot of the time I was going back and forth trying to decide what kind of thing I wanted to make and also spent a lot of time doing research on the many things that exist.
The ideas I am most attracted to are:
- Help people break through the paralysis of choice by randomizing tasks and assigning them more or less time depending on priorities.
While I found something similar on this site:
This entry on Product Hunt : https://www.producthunt.com/posts/get-task
shows someone that created an app to randomize tasks from a list depending on how much spare time they have available at the moment and how much time they assigned to the task. These can be one-time or repeating.
I think you can apply a similar approach to goals and habits for your regular schedule and not only for spare time. Essentially, when you know what you want to achieve but have no idea how to go about it, the app can guide you through an on-boarding process of creating your goals, milestones, and setting up the habits that will take you to that goal. You can assign a priority to these so that the app can create more instances of the higher priority goals and vice versa throughout the week. Then, you could essentially set up your non-negotiable time slots (things in your schedule that aren't movable, maybe because they're dictated by others) like class or work. Every day you can open the app and it will run you through all your "small actions" in a seemingly random pattern that will consistently get you to your goals.
This will avoid decision fatigue and would only ask the user to commit to doing what comes up and use the app every day until the desired outcome. At the end of the week the app can produce a report to tell you how much time you spent on each goal and whether you achieved any milestones. A "skip" option can be added perhaps?
- Object that serves as a touchstone to remind you to do a particular action until it becomes habit (can only do one habit per object).
This process is called using Memory Cues and usually works best for very simple actions like "drink water", "take medicine", etc. It can be done with any random object that stands out and whenever you see it you must do the action you assign it. It works best if it's near the area where this action needs to take place. However, this requires a certain effort on the part of the person to remember what the cue is and to also get incentivized to do the action.
Some objects exist that combine Memory Cues with the action you need to take like the "hidrate" water bottle. The bottle lights up when you're falling behind on your water intake goal for the day to remind you to drink water. As long as you see the light and have the bottle in hand you drink some water, effectively keeping you on track.
Essentially I imagine this object can be placed within the area of the action you want to take consistently. It can sync up to your smart watch or phone via bluetooth and light up or vibrate when you're near to remind you to do that. In order to confirm that the action has been taken or you remembered to not do that habit that you wanted to break you can tap the object and it would track it on a mobile app. The app can track your progress and give you tips on how to progress in your journey by adding a secondary action to the initial one. These actions can be set up daily or every-other day or stalled to a later time. It can have a feature to join a group of people trying to achieve the same thing or invite friends to help you on your progress.
3. Create a future state storyboard around the one idea. Storyboards are typically created from sketches and words that communicate the steps and emotions of the future state your solution addresses.
I decided to storyboard the first idea since I was running out of time and wasn't sure whether these were the right directions to take:
Maddie is a full-time graduate student at NYU. She feels dissatisfied with the path her life is on because she feels she is always "on" studying or stressing about all the things she needs to do. She would like to start taking care of herself and do other things that will make her happy and let her unwind. She had tried picking up hobbies, going to the gym, cooking, etc. before but never stuck to it for any period of time. Homework or other responsibilities eventually took over and overwhelmed her. She feels anxious because once she graduates she is scared that her life will remain the same forever and she would like to make long-lasting goals that can continue past graduation without hurting the important stuff in her schedule and maximizing her time.
She decides she needs some help but she's not ready to pay to get professional help yet. Like many young people she turns to the internet and to apps to see if there's one that will help her out there. She finds many that are merely reminders to do things which haven't worked in the past. Others were expensive for her to pay for. Many of the "productivity" and "planning" apps had complicated interfaces and needed continued updating and checking up on. The ones she found that according to reviews worked best seemed to concentrate only on diet or exercising. Others required her to make decisions about her schedule and take time from schoolwork to use the app, which is part of the problem from the beginning.
She finds "Name of App" and is attracted by the simple step by step interface and the fact that it boasts organizing small actions around a busy schedule to create habits that work towards particular goals. She likes that these actions can start small and the app gives you suggestions on how to better achieve these. The app requires a considerable on-boarding process but, unless her goals or her schedule change, it would be a set and (sort-of) forget situation.
Maddie decides that her goals for the foreseeable future are: learn to speak Spanish, eat healthier, do all her homework and learn to illustrate. She assigns her priorities as follows:
1. Do all her homework - Extreme High Priority, MUST
2. Eat Healthier - High Priority, SHOULD
3. Learn Spanish - Medium Priority, WANT
4. Learn to Illustrate - Low Priority, WANT
She verifies with the app that the percentages of time are correct (60% Homework, 20% Eat Better, 10% Spanish, 10% Illustration).
She sets up the smallest actions she can take each week that will get her to her goal each week.
1. Do all her homework - Extreme High Priority, MUST
- Work on Class 1
- Work on Class 2
- Work on Class 3
- Work on Class 4
2. Eat Healthier - High Priority, SHOULD
- Add greens to one meal.
-Cook at Home
- Drink Water
3. Learn Spanish - Medium Priority, WANT
- Practice
4. Learn to Illustrate - Low Priority, WANT
- Practice
She sets up her app to sync so that anything on her school Google Calendar is un-movable and non-negotiable and continue to update as she updates her calendar(class, team meetings, office hours, etc.).
The app will assign the correct percentage of available time per week that Maddie has to each task. Depending on how many small actions each goal has the time will be equally divided among them within the priority percentage that the overall goal has.
All Maddie has to do now is open the app daily and do whichever action it dictates. If she wants to skip a particular action it will be postponed and re-arranged in the schedule and she will be presented with another option. The app will push notifications whenever the time allotted for each action is over.
By the end of the day if she has skipped any actions she will be asked why (if it's a schedule issue, if it's an action she would prefer to do later or earlier in the day, if it's something she would prefer to leave for weekends, etc). It will learn over time what her patterns are but remain adjustable and persist every once in a while to keep variety.
Maddie is satisfied because she can change her goals whenever she wants or the priority for each and the app will adjust accordingly. It keeps her on track for her goals while adding variety to her days and making her progress exciting.
She looks forward to her weekly progress chart and encouraging quotes.
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