PROBLEM SPACE

Task Management for young adults is fragmented.

Each tool shines in certain use cases, but young adults benefit from using them together for optimal task management.

You can dump endless amounts of information in digital notes

Sticky Notes can be organized in your physical space

Calendars are a great time management tool

Too many apps/tools kill productivity but then why do young adults jump in between so many tools to effectively remind themselves?

All of three of these tools offer benefits that none of them can actually replace the other. Augmented Reality (AR) Spatial Notes, in fact, can offer all these benefits

Benefits

Tools

Digital Notes

Calendar Apps

Sticky Notes

AR Spatial Notes

Notification System

Priority Indicators

Ubiquitous Access

Ease of finding information

Adaptive Organizational Structure

Research Question Evolution

How might we employ Augmented Reality to associate location-based reminders for specific daily tasks to optimize recall and workflow?

How can anchoring digital information onto locations in the physical environment create more intuitive organizational systems that align with innate cognitive structures?

How can we utilize Augmented Reality in synergy with established organizational tools to harness the context of physical locations and the accessibility of digital solutions, thus improving recall, streamlining workflow, and bolstering accountability in daily task management?

What benefits do digital spatial interfaces offer in physical environments that enhance task management for young adults?

Core Benefits

The culmination of this research project has yielded a sophisticated spatial task management system tailored specifically for young adults, designed to harness the unique capabilities of augmented reality to enhance everyday productivity and organization. The system emphasizes four core features that embody the fundamental pillars of effective task management: Priority Indicators, Notification System, Ease of Finding Information, and Anywhere Access.

Seamless integration between Calendars and Spatial Notes eliminates redundant reminders

Firstly, the seamless integration between Calendars and Spatial Notes allows users to synchronize their scheduled tasks with spatially placed reminders, ensuring that no task is overlooked and that each note is positioned in context-relevant locations.

Spatial Sound alerts make it easy to find the exact information

Secondly, the innovative use of Spatial Sound alerts revolutionizes the Notification System by employing auditory cues that guide users to the location of their notes. This feature not only simplifies the retrieval of information but also enriches the interaction, making it more intuitive and less intrusive compared to traditional notification methods. The spatial aspect of the sound ensures that alerts are not only heard but are experienced, enhancing recall and responsiveness.

Know which notes are important at a glance - spatial context and color choice

Users can effortlessly locate and interact with their tasks within their physical space, reducing the time and mental effort typically required to sift through digital or paper-based systems. This spatial organization mirrors the way the human brain naturally categorizes and retrieves information, making the system particularly user-friendly for young adults who thrive in dynamic and visually stimulated environments.

Access your notes from anywhere

Lastly, the feature of Anywhere Access is crucial, especially in today's mobile-first world. Users can access their notes and tasks from any location, leveraging cloud-based synchronization and AR technology to ensure that their personal task management system is always within reach, regardless of their physical presence.

Core Features

My Influency streamlines the fragmented process for small businesses to harness the power of localized brand advocates. through a dedicated discovery network, an integrated campaign console, and a contract manager. Business owners can easily track influencer activations, optimize efforts through real-time visibility into content engagement, and handle ongoing partnership administration needs in one place.

Connect with your local influencers

As a business owner activate multi-channel promotions via this diverse local influencer network

One-stop shop to manage your campaign

Real-time influencer tracking reflects your relationship with each influencer: whether your campaign request has been accepted, product has been picked up, or your promised post has been published to the gram. The published content is always available to be viewed at a glance. Finally, a unified analytics dashboard completes the picture, offering actionable macro and micro-level insights into campaign reach and performance over time to inform strategy.

Hassle free negotiations through a secure contract management

Businesses can simply initialize agreements with designated influencers before finalizing compensation. Campaign details such as product information, influencer tracking, and campaign content requirements are pre-populated for context. The flexible templates allow adjustment of deliverable timeframes to match needs on both sides, empowering organic partnerships devoid of friction. Payment visibility and processing is contingent upon influencers satisfactorily publishing endorsements after products are shipped – incredibly simplifying usually complex coordination.

¹Gedeon, C. (2020, October 7). Moving beyond documents, slides, and spreadsheets.
²Bellotti, V., & Smith, I. (2000). Informing the design of an information management system with iterative fieldwork.
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³Robin, J., Wynn, J., & Moscovitch, M. (2016). The spatial scaffold: The effects of spatial context on memory for events. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(2), 308–315.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Do you want to find the information yourself or the information to find you?

After parsing through 30+ written resources, I realized that...

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We need to fully grasp how work instructions are created, how tasks are best delegated, and how workers can expect to increase their throughput in a clear and intuitive way.¹

The problem with task management is not failure to prioritize well. The real challenge is rather making sure that the important tasks get done, even if the unexpected occurs.²

Spatial context plays a leading role in remembering events as it serves as a scaffold for encoding and retrieving episodic memories.³

Learnings

People already link tasks to environments naturally with notes, piles, props in purposeful spots.

Work/life has ebbs and flows in time and relationships that impact what/whether tasks gets done.

Priority isn't the problem - it's the effort of ensuring important tasks don't slip through the cracks.

Gaps

Are there contextual hooks common across different users that link certain tasks/info to specific physical spaces?

Can variable moods, energy levels, habits be tracked to cue appropriate reminders?

Is there a way to identify optimal moments and environments to prompt task completion?

Can priority be indicated via common sensory saliency that aligns to an individual’s recall tendencies, for example visual/auditory?

What cues would help recall vital tasks in situations users are prone to forgetting?

EXPLORATORY RESEARCH

A ding 🔊 or a checklist tick ✅: What sparks you into action?

To address these intriguing questions, I developed a two-pronged research approach that employed a combination of surveys and exploratory interviews. The surveys, carefully designed to collect generalized data, focused on sensory preferences related to memory triggers and reminder systems. Complementing this, the exploratory interviews provided a more profound understanding of the various methods people utilize to process information, particularly in critical areas such as ideation, information organization, and memory retrieval.

Initial survey responses shed light on the types of sensory cues highlighting sensory triggers of smells (olfaction), touch (somatosensory), and taste (gustation), are significantly less impactful, with each falling

BROAD REDESIGN GOAL

How can a web interface redesign simplify interactions and information presentation to make marketing more accessible for small businesses?

Simplification through decluttering, intentional visual contrast, strategic white space, and layering by importance provides a path to enhancing understandability. Hence, I aimed to elaborate on the specific elements contributing to clutter from colors, information architecture, visual hierarchy, negative space usage etc. while characterizing the overall impact on the user experience.

THE HUMAN ASPECT

How does your Work, Relax, and Play look like?

Complementing the surveys, the exploratory interviews provided a more profound understanding of the various methods people utilize to process information, particularly in critical areas such as ideation, information organization, and memory retrieval.
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Time Structured Tina

Age: 24
Occupation: HCI Masters Student
Preferred Organization Tool: Calendar (Organize using Time)

Affinity for calendars

Relies on a digital calendar to organize research deadlines, group meetings, and user testing sessions.

Prefers personalization

Uses calendar integrations with email and project management tools for seamless scheduling.

Visual timelines are beneficial

Prefers visualizing his schedule to allocate time for coursework and independent study.

Reminder creation redundancy

Tina often finds herself jotting down reminders and important points on physical notes during meetings or lectures due to their immediate accessibility. However, this practice leads to redundancy, as she later has to spend additional time transferring these reminders into her digital calendar, increasing the chances of missing critical details or duplicating entries.

Visual Valerie

Age: 26
Occupation: PhD Student in Industrial Design
Preferred Organization Tool: Sticky Notes (Organize using space and proximity)

Sticky notes fiend

Uses a combination of physical sticky notes and digital tools for brainstorming and organizing research ideas.

Visual thinker through and through

Creates visual mind maps to connect concepts in her research.

Reminders belong in her space

Values the tangibility of physical notes for initial idea generation.

Out of sight, out of mind

As she cannot carry her array of sticky notes everywhere, especially when she needs to work in different locations, she often misses out on accessing her reminders when away from her primary workspace.

List driven Leo

Age: 22
Occupation: Computer Science Student
Preferred Organization Tool: Lists or Notes (Organize using hierarchy)

Finding Relevant Partnerships

Uses digital note apps for creating detailed task lists and tracking coding assignments.

Negotiating Fair Compensation

Prefers breaking down complex programming tasks into step-by-step lists.

Managing Multiple Collaborations

Relies on list updates to gauge progress and stay organized

Difficulty Measuring Marketing Impact

He often forgets or overlooks important reminders since they are not prominently visible or immediately apparent amidst his digital lists, leading to missed deadlines or overlooked tasks.

THE HUMAN ASPECT

But how do individuals organize information in physical space?

Complementing the surveys, the 1:1 exploratory semi-structured interviews provided a more profound understanding of the various methods people utilize to process information, particularly in critical areas such as ideation, information organization, and memory retrieval.
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interview participants prefer hierarchical organization while the rest prefer a more fluid organizational system of remembrance

indicated that effective task management systems need a blend of organizational methods with sensory cues.

In 2 rounds of semi-structured interviews, I learnt

How my participants ideate
What are some of the preferred methods of information organization for task management
What role does physical context plays when organizing information

interview participants use more than a single tool to help them effectively manage their daily tasks

Time Structured Tina

Age: 24
Occupation: HCI Masters Student
Preferred Organization Tool: Calendar (Organize using Time)

Affinity for calendars

Relies on a digital calendar to organize research deadlines, group meetings, and user testing sessions.

Prefers personalization

Uses calendar integrations with email and project management tools for seamless scheduling.

Visual timelines are beneficial

Prefers visualizing his schedule to allocate time for coursework and independent study.

Reminder creation redundancy

Visual Valerie

Age: 26
Occupation: PhD Student in Industrial Design
Preferred Organization Tool: Sticky Notes (Organize using space and proximity)

Sticky notes fiend

Uses a combination of physical sticky notes and digital tools for brainstorming and organizing research ideas.

Visual thinker through and through

Creates visual mind maps to connect concepts in her research.

Reminders belong in her space

Values the tangibility of physical notes for initial idea generation.

Out of sight, out of mind

List driven Leo

Age: 22
Occupation: Computer Science Student
Preferred Organization Tool: Lists or Notes (Organize using hierarchy)

Finding Relevant Partnerships

Uses digital note apps for creating detailed task lists and tracking coding assignments.

Negotiating Fair Compensation

Prefers breaking down complex programming tasks into step-by-step lists.

Managing Multiple Collaborations

Relies on list updates to gauge progress and stay organized

Difficulty Measuring Marketing Impact

He often forgets or overlooks important reminders since they are not prominently visible or immediately apparent amidst his digital lists, leading to missed deadlines or overlooked tasks.

DESIGN IMPLICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS

Unveiling the Insights: Discoveries and Findings

The research phase culminated in revealing some fascinating and insightful findings:

Deriving Task Management Pillars

Adaptive Organizational Structure

Ubiquituous Access

Easy Information Access

Priority Indicator

Notification System

Redundancy in Reminder Creation

^{Is eliminated with an}^{Adaptive Organizational Structure}

Physical tools are preferred for their immediacy and convenience in initial note-taking but digital tools are more manageable over time.

Design MUST help young adults minimize redundant reminder creation

^{“All my tasks usually originate in some form of sticky note or notebook like jotting, like, for example, if I'm having a meeting, and someone brings up an interesting topic that I'm like, oh, I should research into that further. I'll write it down on a sticky note or within my notebook, to then transfer it eventually to my Outlook.” - P10}

Centralization in Digital Note-Taking

^Allows^{Ubiquitous Access}

The preference for a centralized repository for notes and reminders emerged as a strong theme among users.

Design MUST make it easy for young adults to recall when the reminder is due and how to access it easily

^{“Rather than having to like go to different places and then suddenly be thrown, oh, here's this nugget of information I prefer to have centralized repository of things such as this wall of sticky notes or the notes on my computer screen.” - P6}

Challenges in Digital Note Retention and Recall

^{Is addressed if}^{Information is easy to find}

Design must solve the disconnect in digital note-taking by transforming random jots into a structured, memorable system that ensures no thought is ever truly lost.

Design MUST bridge the gap between physical and digital to streamline the reminder and note creation process

^{"But with my notes, I feel like it's an actual problem because I randomly jot things down on my phone, and then they're just gone forever because I totally forgot that I jotted something down" -P5}

Contextual Proximity and Urgency in Physical Spaces

^Uses^{Physical Space as a Priority Indicator}

There is a natural tendency to associate proximity to physical reminders with a sense of urgency. Proximity is directly proportional to urgency

Design SHOULD use proximity as a metric for reminder notification and/or sorting

^{"If I'm placing where there's too much information already, I would probably want to avoid that area because it wouldn't be visible. Also, if I'm placing it somewhere that I know I'm not going to look much then I would forget about it." - P4}

Mitigating information overload

^{Is possible with a minimal}^{Notification System}

The strategic placement of reminders is crucial – too hidden, and they are forgotten; too cluttered, and they blend into the background noise.

Design SHOULD allow young adults to customize how many reminders are being shown to them

^{If I'm placing where there's too much information already, I would probably want to avoid that area because it wouldn't be visible. Also, if I'm placing it somewhere that I know I'm not going to look much then I would forget about it." - P4}

DEVELOPMENT TOOLKITS

Translating insights into action

The development of the spatial task management system was a comprehensive endeavor that utilized cutting-edge technologies to create an intuitive and immersive user experience. Central to this development was the integration of the Microsoft Mixed Reality Toolkit 2 (MRTK2) and Meta's Presence Platform, which together provided a robust framework for building the augmented reality interface.

Development Challenges and Solutions

‍Throughout the development process, challenges such as ensuring compatibility between MRTK2 and Meta's Presence Platform were addressed through iterative testing and adaptation. Custom scripts and modifications were employed to bridge any gaps between the toolkits, ensuring a cohesive functionality that leverages the strengths of both platforms.

Core Technologies

IDEATION

How to utilize the physical space to remind young adults?

These insights laid the foundation for revising the initial problem question to: "How might we employ Augmented Reality to associate location-based reminders for specific daily tasks to optimize recall and improve workflow?" The design requirements were then established around four critical areas - minimizing reminder redundancy, bridging the gap between physical and digital spaces, using proximity as a metric for reminder notification, and allowing customization of reminder visibility.

Augmented Reality Note

Design Mockup

Prototype used in testing

Physical Space as a Reminder

Design Mockup

Prototype used in testing

Spatial Sound Reminders

Design Mockup

Spatial Calendar

Design Mockup

Design Requirements

Design Ideas

Augmented Reality Note

Physical Space as a Reminder

Spatial Sound Alarms

Spatial Calendar

Minimizes redundant reminder creation

Offers Centralization in Digital Note-Taking

Tackles the Challenges in Digital Note Retention and Recall

Uses proximity as a metric to indicate urgency

Mitigates information overload

Findings

Recommendations

Users prefer familiar note designs
Changing note color using slider was unintuitive
Static UI Interaction was cumbersome
Physical space as a reminder was annoying
Neither spatial Note nor Calendar were not sufficient by themselves
Sound, Color, and Animations were the most effective attributes at grabbing attention