Timely

Inspiration

As students in college we have first hand experience with issues surrounding productivity and motivation during the pandemic. As we have an increased amount of work to keep track of, we don’t have a way in which we can differentiate between our leisure and productivity times. As a result, we decided to work on a project that could help keep track of how to use time and brain power efficiently. We took inspiration from organizational tools such as Google Calendar and Notion, but decided to add a more interactive set of features to help with time management and productivity.

What it does

Timely is a tracker that helps organize your tasks from most important to least important in order to help you accomplish more throughout your day. The app has features allowing the user to block out their most distracting apps, as well as a pomodoro timer to help the user stay on track and complete their tasks faster.

How we built it

We brainstormed on a Google Doc all of our ideas and sketches, highlighting the features we thought would be more helpful for the user. We then utilized JamBoard to create the user flow and got started making the designs in Adobe XD.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was trying to brainstorm and share ideas without being in person. Another challenge was achieving a cohesive look for the app as a group, given harder communication with not being in person.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We personally love the timer feature that allows the user to be able to see how much longer they have to work on their task, and also see a list view of where they are on their pomodoro time. Having an app that has all of these features all in one was really exciting for us to create.

What we learned

In facing problems with displaying certain features, we were able to brainstorm ways in which the feature could be shown in a different manner. Through that process, we learned many different ways a single attribute of a design can be presented, whether it is through a scroll, an overlay, or a simple switching of screens.

What's next for Timely

We’d love to explore adding different timer options that users can use besides the pomodoro timer. There would be an update to allow push notifications to remind the user to start working on an urgent task. For the timer screen, the addition of a checklist would be helpful, so that the user can cross off tasks and view their progress while still running the timer in the middle of its break/work phases. We’d also like to allow users to view their monthly plans in a calendar view.