Clave

Responsibilities

Clave is a design project I pursued to address frustrations related to coordinating and accomplishing complex work.
While the project is currently a prototype, I would like to develop it further.

Listening to people

I interviewed three individual contributors and two managers to understand their experiences collaborating on and leading complex work projects.

I used affinity mapping to group common themes and created two personas and empathy maps for Paula, an early career individual contributor, and Ana, an experienced manager. Following these synthesis exercises, I identified three key findings.

• People are most concerned with managing their time to optimize task completion and prioritize their responsibilities.
• People need visualizations of personal priorities and overall project scope to understand and address complex projects.
• Having materials and updates on separate platforms is frustrating and can delay timelines and workflows.

Scoping the solution

From my research, I explored various solutions and determined that users needed a product that contained core project management features and automated time management.

I also decided to create a desktop app because it was the most accessible to workspaces.

I began outlining user journeys that centered on an automated connection between task management and calendar scheduling.

Sketches and wireframes

I sketched various iterations of each screen and conducted guerrilla usability testing to improve the user flow. These early testing insights informed three main changes in the wireframing stage.

1. Created a header design pattern to better display page titles and the primary buttons for consistency across pages.
2. Moved the search bar and notification button into the side panel to consolidate and simplify navigation.
3. Replaced all lists with cleaner widgets to reduce clutter and created more widgets to improve information accessibility.

Developing a brand

Clave is a tool that makes work easier, so people can focus on the things that matter. The overall brand centers around simplicity, clarity, and decreasing complexity. I researched similar brands and collected images that evoked the brand feeling to develop Clave's UI elements.

Iterating with feedback

I conducted two rounds of usability tests with 10 participants in total. The core feedback related to uncertainty around the start and completion of certain tasks, as well as wanting more control over specific notifications.

Based on the test outcomes, I created a list of changes and prioritized them by their impact on the overall experience. Then I completed the following main iterations on the prototype.

1. Developed an "editing mode" for calendar events and tasks to give users more clarity on how to edit and save changes.
2. Created a "notify?" pop-up before users save an action that includes other users to give more control over notifying others.
3. Added more confirmation banners throughout the product to provide feedback when successfully completing actions.

What's next?

I enjoyed working on this project and would love to bring it into development for workplaces.

If I had more time for this project, I would continue conducting usability tests and iterate on the finer interactions and animations. This project highlighted how user flows and component interactions contribute to user trust and confidence. I also learned about the challenges of balancing user control and automating specific actions.

I'll take these learnings into future projects to develop more features that meet user needs and experience expectations.

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