CheckMate

OVERVIEW

Couples struggle with organizing, delegating, and managing tasks together when there isn’t an obvious owner to take the lead. CheckMate helps organize and simplify this process – it’s a task management app that helps couples regain control of their lives.

In 2018, I took a General Assembly online course in UX to help pivot my career from industrial design and innovation consulting into digital product design. CheckMate is a conceptual product from that class.

MY ROLE

Lead Product Designer

UX/UI Design
User Research
Synthesis & Analysis

Research & Strategy

I conducted interviews with 3 couples to gain understanding and insight into how they successfully (or unsuccessfully) managed their lives together. I focused on couples who were going through recent life changes (ex: new baby) predicting that time & task management were a fresh challenge in their lives. I also conducted a competitor analysis, feature audit & prioritization, and created a primary persona to help dial in the primary features and user flow of the app.

Affinity Mapping - Take Aways

  • People are adopting to digital tools, but want a balance (not replacement) with an analog world

  • For some management tasks, there are distinct roles and an obvious owner

  • When there isn’t an obvious owner, tasks are left undone or mismanaged

  • Delegation can feel awkward in a relationship

Competitive Analysis - Take Aways

  • Task Management Competitors: Google Tasks, Todoist, Evernote, Wunderlist, Thing 3

  • Most task management apps are cloud based and vary from free to premium

  • While group task management apps exist, they currently cater to the professional project management vs. personal management

  • No one app is targeting couples/ friends/family

User Testing

Thought the project, I conducted card sorting and early stage paper prototyping on initial screen flows to dial in the key features and navigation. Towards the end of the project, I conducted Usability Testing on the high fidelity wireframes.

Competitive Analysis - Take Aways

From the Feature Card Sort, I learned how quickly this could get complicated. I decided to focus on creating/managing tasks and highlight the owner & informed for the primary flow (shown below).

Usability Testing - Take Aways

  • Adjust the visual hierarchy to differentiate between tasks and their details

  • Include ability to give positive rewards to your partner (kudos)

  • Include an ability to attach website links easily - especially for creating gift lists together

Final Wireframes & Design

As this was my first attempt in app design, I decided to familiarize myself in both Android and iOS pattern libraries, so I designed the app with the look & feel of Material Design but for an iOS device (mainly because I have an iPhone 8 to test the wireframes). The final wireframes focus on primary flows including adding a new list, adding new tasks, managing task owners, and nudging or giving kudos to your partner.

This was the result of 6 week UX Circuit (online) Course through General Assembly. I completed all the work on this project and checked-in remotely with a mentor weekly throughout the project.