Productivity Research
"How do college students manage their time?"
Timeline
6 weeks
Tools
Observations, Interviews
Role
UX Researcher
w/ Mugi Badamdorj, Selene Padilla, & Hannah Blum
"How do college students manage their time?"
6 weeks
Observations, Interviews
UX Researcher
w/ Mugi Badamdorj, Selene Padilla, & Hannah Blum
Stress, left unmanaged in college students, can contribute to poor physical and mental health and worsening grades. Time management is an effective, but oftentimes underutilized, method for combating stress.
We wanted to explore how college students tackle time management and organization. What are their current habits? How effective are the tools they use? The answers, we hope, can shed insight on the future of productivity apps.
We were curious how students search for, select, and utilize time management and organizational tools. To find out, we devised two scenarios to play out during our upcoming observations:
Scenario 1:
Describe the advice you would give to a friend falling behind in their classes. Next, share your screen and demonstrate how you would locate helpful resources/tools.
Scenario 2:
Demonstrate how you would use Google Calendar to plan your upcoming week. (Students were given a fake schedule.)
We remotely observed a total of 8 college students as they responded to each scenario. After recording each observation, we added all notes and quotes to an affinity diagram for categorization.
Through affinity diagramming, we spotted patterns in students' responses that we used to further categorize each scenario:
Scenario 1: Finding Resources
Search Queries
Evaluating Search Results
Evaluating Resources
Scenario 2: Using Resources
Using Google Calendar
Evaluating Google Calendar
Next, we created a flowchart to visualize the process of finding resources that a majority of our participants followed:
This helped us place our data points on a timeline. Armed with our flowchart and our affinity diagram, we pulled out patterns from our collection of observation data.
A majority of participants jumped straight to Google, the most used search terms being "planner/calendar" and "time management".
There seemed to be a consensus among students that Google Search was the best place to find time management resources. Additionally, future productivity resources should emphasize terms like "time management", "planner", and "calendar" to appear higher up in search results.
When evaluating search results, about half of participants chose results with titles including "best x apps". Three participants mentioned scrolling until they found "something they liked", which varied between participants.
These findings imply that resources are more likely to be used if they are featured in listicles. Future productivity resources might try building a consumer base and generating buzz around their product to make it onto one of these lists. The most straightforward way to be featured on a "best of" list, however, is to reach out to the publication.
When evaluating their chosen resource, half of the participants emphasized that "different features work for different people". The most popular tools students looked for were calendars, to-do lists, timers, and reminders.
We found about half of our participants preferred digital tools while half preferred physical tools.
Future productivity apps might choose one of two paths forward:
User preference towards physical over digital tools may indicate a preference for full customization over productivity tools and methods. Therefore, the second path - focusing on several features - may prove more beneficial in winning these users over.
While using Google Calendar, half of our participants emphasized the importance of color-coding. When setting up due dates, half the students created reminders before the due date and two created reminders all day on the due date.
Any future productivity resources looking for features to include should prioritize color coding.
Additionally, they should focus on creating one, really great tool. Alternatively, they can offer a range of different tools and allow users to pick and choose them based on preference.
Most importantly, these resources should be easy to learn and use to retain users that might otherwise revert to physical tools.
Half of our participants preferred other productivity resources to Google Calendar (i.e. Outlook, Apple Calendar). Four out of the eight participants liked that Google Calendar had integrated task lists that you could check off. Another two mentioned the aesthetics - one liked color coding but would like to see more options, and another mentioned the text was too squished to read.
These findings imply that participants like using productivity resources that seamlessly sync with their existing apps and devices. Future productivity resources might ensure smooth integration across a wide range of devices and apps to satisfy the most users. Additionally, users appreciate nested features (i.e. task lists within calendars) and a wide range of well-designed visuals.
In our second round of user research, we wanted to dig a little deeper into students' tool preferences and specific time management habits. To do so, we drafted an interview protocol addressing these areas in greater detail.
Similar to our observations, we recruited 8 college students, interviewed them, and compiled our data points into an affinity diagram. In our final report, we combined our data and recategorized our findings into the following categories:
Project Management
Methods
Tools
Workflow Limitations
Procrastination
Inconsistent Systems
Our findings for the entire study are broken down below:
A majority of participants approached projects and deadlines by following a schedule and/or breaking tasks up into smaller chunksbreaking tasks up into smaller chunks. Several students emphasized the importance of group communication and prioritizing work time.
With a variety of work methods on the table, we would recommend that future productivity resources allow users to customize their work flow to meet their unique needs. For example, allowing users to schedule large-scale projects, then to split those into manageable, day-to-day chunks. Additionally, a feature that notifies users when changes are made to a group project would facilitate communication.
Through the whole study, several students emphasized that different tools work for different people. About half of our participants preferred physical over digital tools, but noted that physical tools have some limitations, such as lack of convenience and no reminders.
The most popular feature among students was calendars. Specifically, calendars with sharing options, color-coding, and notifications.
Over half of the students liked to-do lists, the most common reason being a sense of accomplishment after crossing things off.
Timers were a less popular option for time management, but some participants thought it might be helpful in protecting against burnout.
Many of our participants like using notifications and reminders for deadlines, but in general, find themselves desensitized to them, and therefore feel they are unhelpful.
Many of the implications are similar to previous sentiments - future productivity resources should prioritize calendars with customization options, making all features optional. It may also be helpful to make the most popular features the default features, while also providing optional add-ons like timers and reminders. The most important thing for future productivity resources is to identify a target audience and design features based on their preferences.
We included this category to highlight common issues that interfere with a student's ability to manage their time. These limitations are harder to design for but can pose an interesting challenge to which future productivity resources can ideate solutions.
A majority of participants had some experience with procrastination, generally when they disliked or were bad at a task.
One participant felt Pomodoro Timers were helpful in overcoming procrastination. For future productivity resources looking for solutions, they might try offering this or similar tools to jumpstart a user's workflow. Some users felt procrastination was not necessarily a bad thing - that they worked best under pressure. In this case, destigmatizing or providing information on procrastination could help users overcome or find a silver lining in their habits.
About half of our participants found it difficult to maintain organizational systems. The most common reason was falling out of their routine when things got overwhelming. Overwhelmed students were also less likely to pay attention to reminders.
Counterintuitively, students stand to benefit the most from productivity apps when things are busy. This highlights a major issue in current productivity apps: when students start to feel like using them is a chore, they'll stop using them. To combat this, productivity resources might prioritize ease of use and simplicity to avoid overwhelming users. For example, lockscreen widgets displaying daily tasks and progress bars might be less overwhelming than a stream of reminders.
Now that my first round of detailed user observations and interviews is behind me (woohoo!), I can pinpoint a lot of improvement areas for future studies.
As with a lot of my school projects, a small sample size detracts from the overall findings without following up with a larger, further refined study.
Within the observation round (despite its name), we did not fully grasp the emphasis on observing rather than interviewing. This may have been in part due to the nature of remote observation sessions - it was hard to really observe user actions in this setting. As such, we relied too heavily on warm-up questions and ended up with a lot of overlapping data in our interviews. Additionally, I think the warm-up questions primed our participants a bit for the scenarios.
Overall, I'm grateful I got to work on a study topic that really interests me. I love testing new productivity apps and am excited to track their progression over time - maybe some of our suggestions will be implemented by coincidence!