Did It!
The anti to-do list app designed in 24 hours for the Rice University Design-a-thon that helps students achieve work life balance and beat academic guilt through earning points they can spend at local small businesses.
50% of undergraduates experience guilt or shame when taking essential breaks from their coursework due to heavy workloads or the fear of lagging behind their peers.
Did It! soothes guilt and fear by utilizing low stakes gamification, and reminds students Cs get degrees.
Role
Sole designer and researcher
Skills/methods
Literature Review
Replication of study
Interviews
Quant/Qual Data analysis
Prototyping
Tools
Google Forms
Figma
Watch the Demo Video!
Key Features
A point system that rewards students for doing basic tasks ex (drinking a glass of water)
Ability to set lock screen reminder alarms for specific tasks worth double points
Syncs with Canvas to automatically track points for turning in homework
Ability to redeem points at local small businesses for discounts.
Separated point categories health, home, social, and school to help visualize work life balance on the point dashboard.
Social Impact
Boost confidence, and encourages the formation of a daily routine
A prioritization of mental and physical health, that subverts society’s prioritization of output of work.
Increases visibility of local business near college campuses to boost sales.
Designs don’t fall from the sky ————————————————————————— Check out my research!
Research Findings
Guilt and Shame Drive Students to Fear Rest.
Literature Review
According to the National Medicine Library work life balance is dependent on family, and job satisfaction, but the most important factor was health, and undergraduate students aren’t famous for their healthy habits.
Replication of Study
An article by Mind The Graph defines academic guilt as “The constant fear of not accomplishing something and being behind the crew by taking adequate breaks.”
I wanted to verify their claim by replicating them by creating my own survey.
Survey N=50
My survey of 50 current college students asked, “What is the strongest emotion you feel while taking a break from your school work, that does not include sleeping?”
The answer choices included the top 6 basic emotions to not elicit bias as well as an option to type in their answer.
Top Answers
Guilt
Enjoyment
Shame
How Does it Work?
Did It! allows students to be rewarded for the small tasks they do everyday that are largely not categorized as productive, to receive points and discounts off of local retailers!
Onboarding
Students are able to start earning rewards as soon as they open the app, by selecting tasks they have completed for that day.
Point Dashboard
Did It! points are categorized by health, home, social, and school. This categorization is based on the secondary research that defines work-life balance. This feature also visualizes what aspects of the student’s life may need more balance.
Did It! Point dashboard shows the tasks that user has completed for the day, and what category they fit into. Did It! wants to promote balance, so displaying the numerical value can motivate our users to focus on a category that may be low.
After selecting their completed tasks, they can choose a task they would like to turn into a habit.
New users receive immediate discounts, a long with their initial points, to encourage app usage, and boost morale.
Students will select a time they would like to be reminded to do their focus tasks. This would appear as a lock screen alarm.
After tapping redeem the cashier will scan the QR code, and the points will be subtracted from the users account.
Lo-Fi and Mid-Fi Gallery
By sketching my most important screens out first I was able to explore many different designs and save time before starting mid-fi screens.
I also write my first draft of copy writing, during the lo-fi stage to make writing easier.
Through my mid-fi sketches I learned that some of my assets could be larger, and I needed to make some typeface changes.