Taskly
Product Design, UI, UX
Manage | Track | Collaborate – Simply.
A responsive task management app designed with all the right features with a fresh,
innovative approach
Live to your full potential
Taskly is designed with the tools to make project and task entry smooth, efficient and timely with templates, dependencies, and content customization, allowing users to focus on the other stuff.
Make the most out of your day
Users will spend less time with back and fourth checking on project status and more time focusing on design, development, and strategy. Taskly has tools that let you know when the task is ready for you, zero babysitting involved.
Dive-in with confidence
Users can skip time with consuming on-boarding as their teams and project volume grow. Taskly was designed to be intuitive, simple and clean, requiring practically zero familiarizing. The platform puts teams and projects at the forefront and not some clumsy and cumbersome interface.
User Research
Competitor Analysis:
Researched: Asana, Trello, and Basecamp
View Analysis
Setting Us Apart:
What is Taskly’s industry?
Project and team management with ease of use and simple functionality
Who are the potential Taskly customers?
Young, small businesses or small teams in small to mid-sized companies; self-employed who work on multiple projects
What needs do customers have and how can an app like Taskly fulfill those needs?
Affordable help managing and sorting projects and teams with little or no on-boarding necessary. Taskly will be easy and intuitive and will offer task management, team management, communication and reporting functions in a bright and fun style that’s approachable and fresh
Quantitative Survey
Qualitative Survey
Quantitative Survey
Hypothesis:
Users of task management apps don’t like content-heavy, spreadsheet style platforms and prefer to digest information in a sectioned, small tidbit style format.
Target Audience:
Creative or tech professionals working with small to medium-sized teams and require a project management app for their work.
Validated Assumptions:
- When asked directly if users prefer more at-a-glance views to their project details as opposed to content-heavy and in-depth, almost all participants preferred the former. This validates my main hypothesis
- When it comes to team sizes, a majority (79%) of target users are working with smaller-sized teams and therefore aren’t in need of large amounts of data to manage scheduling and workload
- When filtered out, users who collaborate with smaller teams (under 10) are least interested in content-heavy features like Reporting, as well as asset management, both being features that may require content-heavy viewing formats
- 77% of those surveyed don’t take full advantage of large, robust, feature-heavy task management apps and almost half of them would rather find a more simplified app. This also confirms that people are looking for less frills, unnecessary content and more direct ways to access their information
Qualitative Survey
Problem 1: No task green-lighting for dependencies
Problem 2: Manual task input can be daunting
Problem 3: No filtering functions exist for personalization (ie. to minimize or expand the amount of details seen)
New Insights and Rationale:
- Long, multi-day tasks usually aren’t visually represented well in existing apps and it seems that a job of high importance is treated visually the same as a smaller, less important job
- Sometimes it’s just easier to speak to your team in person or IM them as opposed to training them to use a whole separate communication for in the task app
- Task and project inputting time demands depend on the app you use, but there’s room to make it more streamlined with templates or starting point projects that are built out with existing time frames and dependencies
- Users like to control what they see on their “dashboard” or overviews
- Green-lighting is helpful only if you have a lot of sub tasks within projects. Some users aren’t going that deep ever or don’t want to
User Personas
Team-Leader Tracy: Project Manager
Traits
- Extrovert with a great sense of humor and loves grabbing beers with her engineer friends
- Not as technical as her colleagues but is committed to be on-top of the “latest and greatest” and generally attends networking and industry events
Goals
- Gather business goals and objectives and communicate them to the team
- Easily input and assign projects and tasks as efficiently as possible
- Be as much hands-off of the app administrative or troubleshooting duties as possible
- Create assignments for her team that are clear, direct and gives her peace of mind that they are being digested correctly
- Easily check-in on project status, updates, and communication with little effort and keep stake holders in the loop
Challenges
- Timely project and task data entry
- Ensuring team is utilizing the app
- Tracking a high volume of tasks, across team members
HOW TASKLY CAN HELP
Taskly has the tools to make project and task entry smooth, efficient and timely with templates, dependencies, and content customization.
The beautiful and simple design allows you to easily navigate through projects and tasks, gathering just information you need and making it adaptable to anyone’s preferences.
Creative Cameron: Email Designer
Traits
- Introvert but loves to socialize with his creative group of friends over drinks and trying new restaurants
- Loves attending smaller music shows
- Reads a ton of industry-related blogs and online resources
- Self-taught background in UI/UX and follows best practices in coding his work
Goals
- Get notified when assigned new projects or tasks
- Easily access crucial information and assets in one central location to jump in on work with little follow-up
- A nice UI that doesn’t hurt my head every time I access the app and an intuitive general UX and calendar, as I’ll be accessing this app very frequently to keep on top of my schedule
Challenges
- Knowing when I can start on a task if it’s pending info or someone else’s work first
- Making sure I see and can find updates and messages
- I can’t always tell how extensive or timely a project is going to be in typical calendar views
HOW TASKLY CAN HELP
Taskly has a sophisticated dependency function that green-lights and notifies you when a preceding task has been completed by a team member. Additionally, the calendar and list views of your project/tasks use clean visual treatments to indicate time demands and project scale.
Functional Felix: Front-End Developer
Traits
- Dabbled in a wide range of programs including full-stack, Javascript, Ruby, Swift, etc
- Avid gamer and Reddit contributor and great sense of humor
- Prefers a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone approach to his work and avoids unnecessary meetings and back-and-forth
Goals
- Track and check on my projects and sometimes schedule tasks between me and my other freelance designer and developer colleagues
- Keep communication lines open within the app for an easy, integrated dialogue and receive push and mobile notifications to my devices
- Check off my projects and tasks as I go to stay organized and on-top of deadlines
Challenges
- I don’t like content-heavy apps or a task where I’m spending a lot of time trying to process or interpret it
- Too many cooks in the kitchen can make the team lose momentum and focus
HOW TASKLY CAN HELP
Taskly’s UX/UI is clean, simple and intuitive. There’s basic functions within your dashboard that aren’t over-thought and allow you to navigate seamlessly. The team assignment function is simple and keeps all necessary member in the loop. The communication features are both nested within the tasks as well as in their own section for a fail-safe view of updates.
Information Architecture
Task Model
Customer Journey Map
Site Map
Task Model
Customer Journey Map
Site Map
Usability Testing
Card Sorting Exercise
Results considered in site architecture above
Paper & Interactive Prototypes
Featuring initial wire-frame designs
Subject 1: Justin – Very thorough and took the time to understand every detail and how it rolled up to the functionality of the app. Generally, thought it was complex but well thought-out.
1. From Home Screen: Walk me through how you would create a new project.
- Subject navigated to the first big box “NEW”. Feedback was that the project option to click made sense but he wondered by the other boxes didn’t have options.
- Subject asked why there were two areas to select “New” (referring to thenav bar)
2. From New Project Page: Continue to create a new project.
- Form makes sense
- Was a little confused about the different in the Upload and Link doc button until I explained. Then, it made sense.
- Doesn’t quite understand the heading “Observers” and feels it should be called something else. This could be because he hasn’t had experience with the adding team members feature for the tasks themselves. Also,wondering what it looks like if you need to add multiple observers.
3. From Project Creation Confirmation Page: Now, please add a task to your new project.
- Page details make sense. No questions or confusion.
- Was very intuitive to click the Add/Edit Task button
4. From New Task Page: Continue to create a new task by filling out the form
- Was confused by the second “Project” dropdown field. I explained this would auto populate if coming from the prior project page and it made sense.
- Felt term “Assignee” was broad and suggested “Task Assignee”
- Suggested field for “Add Observers” look like the one for the project form.
- Was still unclear on “Task Dependency” even when explained. Though the directions could use help.
- Suggested removing # days in the first field of the “Time Span” section since it may not always be days and the second dropdown to start with days as default.
5. From Task Creation Confirmation Page: Where would you most likely go after this?
- Both “Edit Task” and the Completion box get lost
- Suggested Task Overview.
User Testing
Multi-Click Test
A/B Test 1
A/B Test 2
Multi-Click Test
Multi-click test
Please click on where you’d go to view your tasks in a list format.
Screen 1
Screen 2
Results
Screen 1 (17 responses):
- 41% (7) clicked on the incorrect footer nav icon for REPORTS
- 24% (4) clicked on the incorrect NEW option in the body menu
- Only 29% (5) clicked on the correct OVERVIEW option in the body menu
- 6% (1) clicked on incorrect REPORTS
Screen 2 (15 responses):
- 80% (12) clicked on the correct MY tasks LIST option in the body menu
- 7% (1) clicked on the incorrect PROJECTS option in the body menu
- 7% (1) clicked on the incorrect MY tasks CALENDAR option in the body menu
- 7% (1) clicked on the incorrect OVERVIEW option in the body menu
Summary
It’s evident that users are having trouble determining this feature’s purpose and content based both on the associated verbiage and general UI iconography. Next Steps: Rework titles and icons for both OVERVIEW and REPORTS.
NEXT STEPS
Rework titles and icons for both OVERVIEW and REPORTS.
A/B Test 1
A/B Preference Test
When it comes to retention, do users prefer color-coded features as opposed to a mono-chromatic feature palette?
Hypothesis: Having each feature branded with its own color allows users to retain a desired action for better efficiency.
Version A: Control with color-coded categories
Version B: Monochromatic categories
Results
Control Version A: 79% preferred
Version B: 21% preferred
Comments
“Easy to read, more dynamic”
“Simpler and easier to understand”
“Gives impression that each does a different task without having to read too carefully.”
“Colors are easier than reading the titles. My brain understand colors more :)”
UPDATES
Kept color trio for unique categories and reworked yellow hue. Prepared new color family option for secondary A/B test against current.
A/B Test 2
A/B Preference Test
Which color version has a more “fun” and “easy to use”
tone?
Version A is more vibrant, energizing, and fresh and thus provides users with a more light-hearted and fun app to use.
Version A: Control with bright colors
Version B: Slightly more refined and professional colors
Results
Control Version A: 36% preferred
Version B: 64% preferred
Comments
“Easy to read, more dynamic”
“Simpler and easier to understand”
“Gives impression that each does a different task without having to read too carefully.”
“Colors are easier than reading the titles. My brain understand colors more :)”