Study Buddy
UI/UX Designer
A tool to encourage students to stay focused and complete tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prototype: Vanparia_Shriya StudyBuddy Final App Design (adobe.com)
Project Title
Study Buddy – maintain focus with your custom buddy
Goal: Help users increase productivity while encouraging the user to stay focused, motivated, and productive as they complete their work and assignments.
Project type
Target User: College Students
Project Type: Mobile Application
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD
Project date: Jan. 2022 – May 2022
Role:
Solo project (UI/UX Designer, Researcher, Developer)
Project Summary
This app allows the user to complete their daily tasks/work with the help of a customizable character. The app will block all notifications from the device to minimize distractions for the user. It will also allow users to add and study with friends, connect their music, and overall increase productivity to the user while promoting healthy studying habits.
Challenge: Due to pandemic, schooling started to go online to avoid the spread of the virus. This cause students to stay at home which brought forth a huge negative impact. Students haven’t been focusing on their assignments, grades have been dropping, and students aren’t learning. As the pandemic slowly lifts, it’s harder on students to get back to their usual learning styles.
Main Users: Students who find it difficult to stay focused.
Main features
1. Personalization
Users can create a personalized character to their own liking. The character acts like a friend who can sit next to the users as they complete their assignments while also reminding the users to take breaks and providing encouraging messages to continue pushing forward.
2. Study Together
Users are able to send codes to add friends within the app. This allows the users to call and study with their friends and characters. When the user is on call with a friend, their character will be shown on the home screen as well. Users are then able to listen to music, study, take breaks, and silence notifications together with their friends.
3. Focus mode
Users can connect their music (Apple, YouTube, or Spotify), write which tasks they wish to complete, and set a timer for studying and break times. The app automatically silences all notifications on the user’s device however, the user can change this within their profile settings.
These features increase app engagement with its personalization when creating a study buddy, improves focus and productivity, and promote healthy studying habits with timed studying, breaks, and words of encouragement.
Reflection
This was the first mobile app that I created as a student thus, I would change a lot about this application. As it was my first mobile app, I think it was a good start but if I ever had a chance to redesign this app, I would include best UX practices and make the screens less crowded and compact. Overall, I love the idea and concept of this application as study apps are increasing nowadays due to students having difficulty in staying focused for a long period of time. With some design and UI tweaking, I think this app would become successful in the long-run.