Chuck
Project G.A.R.D.E.N.S
During our Senior Capstone class, our objective was to develop a pitchable project that integrated the 'Community' theme. With a timeline of 14 weeks, we transformed our ideas into an industry-level end-product. Throughout the process, we actively participated in stand-ups and presented bi-weekly pitches to showcase our progress.
- Sebastian - Lead UX Researcher/UI Designer
- Cesar - UX Researcher/UI Designer
- Luke - UX Designer/Prototyper
- Hannah- UX Architect/UI Designer
- Mikaela - Project Manager/Branding
Redefining Collaboration Through Task Management
Navigating the post-COVID hybrid work model has accentuated the need for effective productivity tracking. Chuck, a user-friendly task management tool, emerges as the solution to foster collaboration while respecting individual work preferences.
How can we enhance task collaboration in hybrid work, adapting to diverse work styles and team dynamics for task reassignment?
Unveiling Chuck's Purpose:
Meet Chuck—a revolutionary task management tool designed for hybrid work. Beyond traditional task tracking, Chuck enables effortless task reassignment through its unique Chuck board. With personalized workspaces, it caters to individual work styles, enhancing overall efficiency. By fostering smooth communication and intelligent task reallocation, Chuck brings teams together for a cohesive and efficient work experience.
Research
Efficiency in Design Collaboration
Surveying the collaborative landscape, a prevalent obstacle emerged – the fragmentation of essential tools. This insight fueled our tool's development, dedicated to streamlining workflows for designers managing non-linear, iterative projects. For instance, completing tasks in Figma from different projects before diving into User Interview analysis streamlines workflow. This strategic approach promises a more efficient design process. This insight laid the foundation for engaging conversations with designers, shaping our understanding of the hybrid work environment.
Interviews
Insights from Designers
Conversations with experts like Rachel Diesel, Jonathan Dharmadi, and Will McCloskey highlighted challenges such as limited casual connections, excessive meetings, and the importance of seamless communication in hybrid work settings.
Takeaways
- Emphasized the lack of casual social avenues.
- Advocated for low-pressure environments and open communication.
- Facilitate open communication on workloads and mental/energy readiness.
- Highlighted the need for fostering informal team bonding.
Takeaways
- Discussed disruptions caused by excessive meetings.
- Spotify teams typically focus on specific platform tasks rather than diverse projects.
- Streamline communication and share work snippets effortlessly through update boards, ensuring teams are well-informed and reducing redundancy to mitigate duplicated efforts and resource loss.
Takeaways
- Teams function as separate mini agencies, limiting cross-team communication.
- Open channels like Slack enable visibility into others' work, promoting transparency.
- Hopes for opportunities exist for teams to socialize outside of work, enhancing connections.
- Multiple projects across diverse clients are common, showcasing versatility.
High Level Goals
Enhancing Productivity with Chuck: Our Objectives and Approach
Our focus is on improving task delegation, enhancing trust, and fostering social capital in the evolving hybrid work landscape.
1. Focus On What is Important
2. Facilitating Trust & Honesty
1. Improve Social Capital
1. Task Redelegation For All Workflows
Process
Laying The Ground Work
As the lead UX researcher and secondary UI designer, I steered the team through comprehensive research, conducted insightful interviews, and offered pivotal insights. I not only facilitated the design process with essential resources and templates but also crafted an outline for user personas and journey maps. These tools served as guiding beacons, aiding in a deeper understanding of our target users and helped create the UX artifacts that followed.
Crafting Personas for Chuck's Diverse Users
Leveraging interviews, research, and competitive analysis, our team meticulously constructed three personas tailored for senior designers, junior designers, and project managers. These personas played a crucial role in molding our design decisions, ensuring our product aligned with the specific needs and challenges of these user groups.
Visualizing User Interactions with Chuck: Journey Mapping
Building on the personas’ backgrounds, opinions on monitoring, desires, goals, frustrations, and experiences, we envisioned potential interactions with Chuck, mapping out how these diverse user personas might engage with the product.
Shaping Chuck's Workflow Structure
Our comprehensive site map and user flow laid the foundation for Chuck's workflow, ensuring a cohesive user experience as we transitioned into the production phase.
ChuckBoard Flow: Expanded Card
- From the chuckboard employees can see all projects along with its currents chucked tasks simultaneously.
- The ability to view what tasks are up for grab and accept the chucked task.
- View what tasks you chucked, to better understand your workload.
- Send communication directly from the chucked task to a person for them to take up your chucked task.
ChuckBoard Manger Flow
- From the chuckboard a manger can assign a chuck task and view it in greater detail.
- They can also approve chucked tasked if required.
- See who chucked a task and who accepted it on the individual chuck task expanded
Visualizing Workflow Through Iteration
Refining Workflow Sketches for Chuck
Starting with sketches, we outlined the core workflow sections. Collaborative critiques helped align our visual goals, ensuring consistency with Chuck's primary objectives and functionality. This process led to the exclusion of elements incongruent with Chuck's core focus, like the idea of a whiteboard, as it didn't align with Chuck's primary purpose.
Testing Chuck's Blueprint: Wireframes Evolution
Our initial wireframes formed the basis for testing workflow, layout, and navigation, jumpstarting the formatting of components within "Chuck's" design evolution.
Enhancing Workflow Finesse: Iterative Wireframes
Through three iterations of wireframes and light prototyping, we honed and refined the workflow for "Chuck." These iterations focused on enhancing visual elements such as task cards for improved hierarchical readability and reworking the layout of popup modals to make their presence more visually evident over the main screen.
Style/Branding
Infusing Personality: Chuck's Stylish Makeover
After refining our wireframes, we incorporated style and branding elements from our mini design system to cultivate a warm, playful, and inviting atmosphere within "Chuck."
Bradmark/Logo
Brandmark/Logo
Iconography
Typography
Colors
How to Chuck?
Personal Dashboard View
In the personal dashboard view, employees access their current tasks organized by project. Task cards provide in-depth information, while tags offer quick task categorization. The list/board toggle facilitates a dynamic shift between list and category views, offering versatility in various scenarios.
Chuckboard Personal View
The Chuckboard personal view enables employees to access and manage their current tasks. With the ability to 'rechuck' tasks, different view options like default, calendar, and timeline are available to suit varying needs—calendar for future planning and timeline for task prioritization. Search and filter functions provide quick task retrieval, while the toggle switch swiftly changes between personal and team tasks.
Chuckboard Team View
In the team view of Chuckboard, employees can access and review tasks assigned to others. This feature allows individuals to review tasks from other team members and accept them. It offers a comprehensive view of team tasks, enabling smoother collaboration and task distribution among team members.
Taskboard Personal View
The taskboard personal view provides employees the ability to view and manage tasks from various teams they are a part of. This feature allows individuals to have a consolidated view of tasks across different teams they are involved with, fostering a comprehensive approach to managing their responsibilities within the organization.
Taskboard Team View
The taskboard team view enables employees to view tasks from different teams they are a part of. This feature offers a consolidated view of tasks across various teams, fostering a comprehensive approach to managing responsibilities across different team collaborations.
Expanded Card View
Expanding a task card allows for greater detail on that specific task and the project it belongs to, offering an in-depth understanding of the task's specifics and its relation to the overall project.