During the pandemic 73% of students reported increased stress and isolation. Many features of existing productivity apps help students work more, but oftentimes, the social aspect and accountability is taken away from it. How might we help students with helping with their wellbeing and being more social?
Students drown in work and forget to live.
Post-COVID students face a triple threat:
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Packed schedules with no time for breaks
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Burnout from poor work-life balance
☹︎
Isolation from avoiding social activities
Existing apps optimize for work, not particularly wellness.
We researched popular apps used among students and analyzed 3 popular time management apps like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and TickTick and 2 productivity focused apps like Flow and Apple Fitness. Each of these apps leaned heavily into productivity and work over the social/hangout aspects of it.
What they did well:
What they were missing:
Smart recommendations students to create breaks.
This idea stemmed from a place of self-care. Often times, students spend long hours working, but forget to take breaks. We explored how the app could act as a wellness advocate for students.
Pomodoro built into your calendar, not a separate app
One app, one source of truth. Reduces context switching and makes time management feel seamless.
Blocking time for social hangouts.
Makes socializing as frictionless as possible. The easier it is, the more likely students will actually do it.
What we learned from testing
We tested paper prototypes with 3 university students, giving them realistic scenarios: "You have a busy week of midterms. Use Harmony to plan your schedule and include time for friends."
Successful completion of user tasks
All participants we conducted user testimg with immediately understood the concept and completed all tasks relating to viewing social hangout progress and using the smart breaks feature successfully.
Pomodoro navigation was confusing
2/3 participants got stuck when starting the pomodoro timer from the calendar event. This pointed to a lack of clarity of how to start the pomodoro timer since it was nested in the event details. As a result, we simplified pomodoro UI and moved the "Start Task" button to calendar event card (not buried in event details).
Social hangout metrics could create unnecessary comparison and anxiety
All participants worried about comparing themselves to friends on how much they hung out during the week. Although sharing progress on how much social interaction a student did during the week could be another way to hold accountability and social updates, the explicit sharing to friends felt too much. To reduce the comparioson, we decided to make the social sharing of hangouts during the week opt-in and let users choose to see friends' activity.
Smart Break Recommendations
Harmony automatically suggests meal and break times when you’ve been working too long. No manual scheduling for the breaks is required.
Solution
Integrated Focus/Pomodoro
Focus sessions are built directly into calendar events. Students can start working with one tap and automatic breaks are included.
Social Hangout Events with Groups
Preset friend groups to make scheduling social time as easy as scheduling work. Track social health and see how you met social goals compared to friends.
After the initial 8-week class project, I spent 2 additional weeks refining Harmony to address testing feedback and complete unfinished features.
What I added:
→ User persona: Created a detailed persona to keep the team aligned on who we're designing for
→ Information Architecture: Mapped the entire app structure to identify navigation pain points
→ Design System: Consolidated components and primitives to ensure visual consistency across all screens
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