Gotcha! (formerly OneTrack) walks through the reasoning for a final solution before implementation.

[Read time: 15 mins]

Final Synthesis and Ideation

We created a system path to help us think through the final solution and a bubble map to help us formulate relationships between solution elements. Later on, we added sticky notes to highlight the features we wanted to keep in our MVP.

Bubble Map

In the Bubble Map, the three distinguishable solution features are “work/study mode,” “social feature,” and “data analysis” feature. The work/study mode tool is the focus of our solution: a tool students can use to keep them focused during active work. Once a user enters the work mode, they have three options: 1. uninterrupted work (no action) 2. exiting the study session early (exit) 3. or facilitating a break (indicate a break).

Finishing the study session in one sitting and exiting the app early are simple outcomes; therefore, their circles are small. However, facilitating non-derailing work breaks is a key aspect of our solution and is, therefore a large component of the bubble map. Our break facilitation method involves having the user set an intention for their break and engage in a meditation session after completing a break to transition back into work mode.

After a user exits the work or study mode, they can then access additional features of the app, such as data insights on their work sessions and social media features where they can engage with others using the app and their content. These two features are secondary to the app and therefore are off to the side.

The bubble map informed our wireflow because it helped us define the three main portions of our wireflow and that we want to prioritize building out the work mode portion of the wireflow the most. The bubble map helped us realize that “work mode” is our main feature, and in the wireflow and prototype, we want to build these out to assist in identifying pain-points and creating an optimal design since it’s the main feature of our solution.

Systems Map

The system map includes three main paths for three distinct personas.

Busy Brenda

On the bottom left, we see Busy Brenda, who uses the app to start earlier on one big task, but is at risk of an emergency-exit when she has another important task come up. They get the most use out of the minimum work time, and are motivated by this chunking of large tasks.

Self-Destruct Seb

In the top right, we have Self-Destruct Seb, who uses the app while he’s studying but is at risk of taking breaks that lead to abandoning work. They get the most use out of facilitated breaks and scaffolded work sessions, and are highly motivated by the social aspects of the app.

Best Life Betty

Finally, we have our ideal persona and eventual power user, “Best Life Betty”. They use the app while working and uses the facilitated breaks to help transition back into work. Once completed, they browse the social media content on the app as a reward and analyzes personal data to find trends in their work habits to optimize future sessions.

“Best Life Betty” helped improve our wireflow because they illuminated the ideal user’s journey through the app. With Betty, we identified pain-points and corresponding solutions for our two personas.

Features and Flows

From synthesis, we distilled features that should be in the main flow and drew each out. These ideated initial versions, which we later combined.

Work Mode

Users begin a work session by choosing how much time they would like to work for. A default of 15 minutes is set since our research shows that defaults are often used by users but it is also good to give them autonomy as different users may have different working styles. The user can also select from their frequently set times.

After this, the user enters the “working” timer screen. During this screen, they can take a break at any time if they are getting distracted or continue to work. If they “take a break” they will be given the option to meditate or breathe which helps them regain a flow state and continue working, according to our the findings of research in our research review. If they finish their timer outright, they also have the option to extend it by intervals which can help people already in a flow state not get interrupted.

If the user takes a break during a non-extended session, they will have to return to that work session. if they take a break during an extended session, their break will also allow them to end the work session. The key is to get people to commit to the time they committed to working.

Exiting a session allows the user to access the data and social elements of our app.

This is the core of our solution’s functionality.

Social Media

In socials, users can post stories with images taken during their study sessions and view and reply to stories from their added friends. If a user replies to a photo, the app will redirect them to their direct messages with the same friend, where they can continue to react to their friend’s post using our novel emoji chat feature. We limited the chat feature to only emojis as they can convey a message concisely without being too distracting. (Imagine being distracted for more than 10 minutes by only emojis; it’s very difficult).

Our decision to incorporate social features into the app was based on literature reviews that showed that community can help boost accountability. Additionally, cooperative social pressure to post and check in with friends can serve as a motivating reward to engage in meaningful work.

Since the social media aspect creates a community around productive study habits and encourages consistent usage of the solution, it is crucial to our solution’s reward system and would be definitely be included as supporting functionality.

Data Insights

Data is primarily taken from the work session. First, our solution definitely employs an AI to classify the photo data collected while users are in “work mode” as “on task” or “off task”. We can offer different views of this data to help users understand when they were caught distracted, were on task, or took breaks.

We then experimented with views of the data. Here, a plotting of successful work sessions based on the difficulty of the task. For example, while working on chemistry, which is a challenging subject for them, they were rewarded with a large y-value data point, and when caught off task on chemistry, they received a low y value. This advanced version of the system rewards more difficult tasks at a greater scale, to help users scaffold work sessions better. The user could then view their historic data views.

While this level of data analysis requires some additional building out of features, this is a rough imagining of the data section’s capabilities.

Final Choices

After discussing each of the the above features, we settled on a final flow, minimizing smaller decisions around data and socials for now, and building out important features in the work flow.

Starting out

The user opens the app and is met by our homescreen, from where they will be met with three options: 1. Study/Work mode 2. Data analysis 3. Socials. Both 2 is disabled until the user completes one work session, so there is some data to use. And 3 is disabled until the user completes one minimum work session each day (15 min). The default minimum session will be set to 15 minutes, but the user have the freedom to change and customize the time depending on their personal goals later on.

Main feature: Beginning a work session

If the user chooses the first option, then they will be directed to a starting screen where they can set the length of the session. When they chose to start the session, the app will go into ambient mode that shows a progress bar based on session time. During the work session, the app will use the computer’s webcam to take pictures of the user at random time intervals throughout the session. This includes break and working periods.

Taking a break

The user can exit the session at any time, but only one other button is present: take a break.

First, they will set their intentions for the break (i.e. the activity that they plan to do) and can change the default duration of the break timer. During the break, they will see a timer countdown. Once the break is over, the user can chose a brief 30 second transition activity (meditation or breathing exercises) that allows them to clear their head and get back into the grind mindset, after which they will be redirected to the work session screen.

Ending a session

When ending the session as planned (after the time period they set), users can extend their session (and end the extension without penalty) or go through the exit process. In the exit process, users review the pictures, approve our Ai’s classifications of them and add text (metadata) on what they were doing at the moment each image was captured if desired. They can also choose post their favorite one to their story (whether an extra-studious selfie or a caught-red-handed blooper). The posting of the picture is optional but incentivized through daily streaks.

Users who end the session early will not go through the exit process, and secondary features will not be unlocked.

Secondary features

Once the minimum session is completed, the secondary features in the app are unlocked.

In socials, the user can view friends’ stories and send reactions or DM the friends using only emojis. as well as engage with them through liking or reacting to the stories within the emoji-chat feature.

In data, the user can view AI data visualizations that provide useful views: productivity progress over time, common distractions, and productivity at typical timestamps. In a more advanced version of the solution, the AI model would train on user productivity data to generate an ideal study/work schedule for them.

Other minor task flows that aren’t directly related to the main functionality of the app, but would be supported in the MVP include adding and removing friends, managing a profile, and modifying the default settings for the app.

Final Reasoning

After multiple rounds of iterating and synthesizing, we settled on this version of “Gotcha!” as our final solution. Gotcha! combines productivity and mindfulness through random ‘candid’ pictures of the user during work session. It leverages ambient computing to provide a non-distracting work environment that doubles as a non-derailing break facilitation platform (our novel “dis.covery,” or distraction recovery technology). As supporting features, the user can feel empowered through awareness of their work habits and find motivation in social rewards.

Gotcha! builds on competitor work and psychological literature, as well as Gotcha! user studies, to offer a low-threshold entry point for productive work and a high-impact offering for sticking to it.