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✅ Study with People Like You by Creating or Joining a Group
✅ Support or Compete with Study Group Members
✅ Be Aware of Elapsed Time and Get Feedback
✅ Treat yourself if you succeed, treat teammates if you fail!
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Why is it so hard to focus at home?
Since quarantine, I struggled a lot in keeping myself focused because I was the type of person who could only study in public spaces. Therefore, I was curious what I could do to help those people like me who found it difficult to concentrate at home.
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I realized there were too many directions that I could take. Since I found many people who could focus at public places failed to focus at home, I decided to focus on what we can learn from public spaces and how to apply the insights to the home setting. After talking to a work professional, I decided to focus on how to increase intrinsic motivation for students.
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From the interview data, I generated 71 so-whats using the ELITO method, and then organized so-whats inspired by the arousal theory of motivation and the "Flow" theory. People perform best when they are around medium arousal theory, not too high, not too low.
From research, I realized that interpretation of the same stimuli depends on how it is processed.
The same stimuli can mean many things, depending on the processing level they occupy. It might mean a break, white noise, or distraction. The interpretation of the same stimuli varies across different people at different times.
What matters is not the stimuli itself, but our immunity to the stimuli.
Drawn based on interview data.
Facilitate users to get into and maintain the flow state, instead of eliminating distractions.
Since the physical environment is pretty hard to change and is out of the reach for a digital product, chaos at home is often inevitable. However, since people will get more immune to distractions when they are in the flow state, my design focus is to increase people's immunity to distractions by facilitating their entry to the "flow" state.
And don't overdo it. The tools are just for helping them get into the flow state. After they enter the flow, to keep them focused on their tasks, the software should minimize the required attention from the users, otherwise, any extra aids become distractions.
Sally enters a study space and she knows she needs to keep quiet and behave properly to not disturb people around her, or she will get kicked out of this place.
Everyone follows protocols to not disturb others, so everyone can study in their independent mental space.
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When Sam studies with people who have the same goals and skill levels, he will feel the peer pressure and get more motivated. He is also more willing to study when he sees others working hard.
There are two types of contagion. Resonance occurs when people find commonalities with each other. Radiation describes the influence of role models on others.
Lily finds herself most productive in public spaces, where the ever-changing environment keeps her constantly aware of time passing. The ebb and flow of the crowd, the shifting sunlight, and the closing of nearby cafes all serve as subtle cues that keep her focused and on task, much like the effect of a looming deadline.
Jimmy faces a daily struggle to secure a seat in the library, often spending 10 or more minutes searching for the perfect spot in the morning and even longer in the afternoon. But the effort is worth it, as the coveted seat represents a precious opportunity to focus on his studies and achieve his goals in a world where entertainment is ubiquitous.
Design Challenge 1: Reframe "social Obligation" at Home
Since students are studying at home, their capability to disturb others through shared contexts (sound, view) is minimized. They don't need to follow the same protocols in public spaces when they are at home. The essential difference in the settings requires me to be creative when translating the insights into design.
Imagine a student sitting down in a library to study. They make a silent promise to themselves and to those around them to focus and avoid disrupting the peaceful atmosphere. When students break the promises they made (such as disturb others or start doing things irrelevant to studying), they will be stopped by others (if it is serious) and feel ashamed.
HMW help students commit to studying and receive feedback when they fulfill or break their promise?
Design Challenge 2: Design social influences at home
Contagion at public study spaces is a kind of subtle and implicit social interaction. Contagion creates a study atmosphere that doesn't require people's deliberate attention, but people can perceive it with their peripheral vision.
HMW design virtual social interactions that don't require cognitive resources while focusing?
Design Challenge 3: Design to only spread good influences
Interviewees also reported that they were influenced by people's behaviors during breaks, such as playing cellphones and going in and out, which can't be constrained by protocols.
HMW present people influence selectively to only spread positive influence while minimizing negative influence?
Design Challenge 4: Design to increase time awareness
HMW help people develop a proper awareness of time at home?
Design Challenge 5: Design to increase commitment
HMW design equivalents to that effort which can prevent people from opting out of the flow?
I created four personas based on four types of motivation. These motivation types inspires me of designing multiple mechanisms to inspire users with different motivations.
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I brainstormed ideas and organized them in two ways, which helped me converge ideas and develop new concepts.
1. Sort ideas based on their impact and correlation to my insights
I segregated the circle into three areas based on three main insights. The degree of post-its to the center of circle represents their affinity to different insights. The distance between post-its and the center represents their impact on solving design problems.
2. Group features by insights and which stage they can contribute to
I classify the studying process into five stages: setup (both mental and physical), flow, intervention before exiting flow, break, intervention for getting back to flow.
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I think this question solution tree is the most important step in ideation. QOC inspired me to mix existing solutions together to generate a better solution that meets more criteria.
After finishing this tree, I decided that my solution was an app where people can buy treats for themselves or others depending on their completeness of focus goals in a virtual cafe setting.
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Problem: don't know how the incentive mechanism works and lack flexibility
Solution: add one page to educate users how this mechanism can help them and how it works; offer more user control
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Problem: users didn’t notice they reached break time because the texts were apart from the timer.
Solution: use graphics to visualize different states
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Problem: contrast is too low for some design components
Solution: use color accessibility check and fix color accessibility issues
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In CoFlow, you can join a room and study with similar people who share the same identity and tasks with you. You can also create your group and invite friends!
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During breaks, users can see others' progress, react to activities with emojis, and leave comments. The ranking is also available on the leaderboard to motivate people.
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Set a resolution and see your progress to improve your time efficiency. Set time limits for study sessions and breaks to help you build your routine at home. When there is one minute left for break, we will remind you by popping up a timer and playing sounds to help you get back on track.
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Before starting focusing, users can set up their focus goal. They can also choose to join the rewards system. According to research, incorporating financial stakes can increase the success rate by up to three times. Users can choose to get money returns or get treats from the reward system if they finish the session. If they fail, their money will go to team members.
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As I designed for flow experience, I also reached the flow state while doing this project and felt accomplished after seeing how abstract psychology theories can be applied to understand a real complex scenario and make a design impact.
My Research Lessons:
1. Don't ask leading questions to confirm my own bias. Do ask open-ended prompt questions to help users recall the contexts.
2. Don't take users' stories at face value. Do delve deeper to investigate the nuances of the contexts.
My Design Lessons:
1. Try to reframe the insights from different perspectives and compare how different solutions can contribute to core design problems.
2. Design concept is not a collage of features. Elaborate around the core experience flow. Translate research insights to design ideas in the context of experience flow.
Next Steps:
1. Add more onboarding screens to educate users of the mechanisms
2. Design a browser plugin to aid their workflow on computers
3. Conduct more user testing and collect more feedback
The illustrations in the part of research insights credit to unDraw.
The illustrations in UI credit to "GethingsDone" from UI8.
