Do you find yourself feeling like you can do more with your personal time to increase your personal productivity? Do you find it hard to schedule your personal activities in your calendar? Don’t worry, you are not alone.

Setting time for yourself should not be difficult. We know how overwhelming it might feel. That’s where My-Time comes in. We help you prioritize YOU, by optimizing your scheduling experience to plan your personal time.

This way you spend less time planning and more time doing!

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User Pain Point

Meet Alex, a working professional, who has been struggling to plan his personal activities into his calendar. He wants to spend at least an hour at the gym three times a week, and meditate in the morning every day. However, he finds it demotivating to navigate through his busy schedule and slot some time in to do these activities. Alex feels like he could do more to achieve his personal goals, but he struggles to block time out to do so.

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Feedback

To understand our problem space better, we posted our survey on various platforms. Based on the responses of over 70 people, we found that over 85% of our participants agree that planning is important to them. Majority of our respondents currently use some form of planner to plan work meetings, appointments, errands and time for self-care and personal development. However, over 90% of our respondents were not satisfied with planning tools currently available to them. And over 70% want to, but find it difficult to plan their personal activities (self-care, personal development etc).

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Landing on the solution

For our MVP, we decided to focus on the users who were having trouble scheduling their personal time. We hypothesized that scheduling a time for our users in their calendar will help our users feel more productive in their personal time and achieve their personal goals.

We confirmed this preliminary hypothesis by conducting some quick qualitative experiments with our users, and received a positive response. Thus, validating our proposed hypothesis.

Explanation of solution

My-Time is a web platform that helps users plan and prioritize their personal time into their schedules.

My-Time allows users to efficiently plan their personal activities by giving them:

a platform to organize their personal activities
alleviate the stress of planning for our users by generating a schedule for them that can be added to their google calendars
provide an easy to use experience for users to achieve their goals

Key features include:

Secure log-in via google account
Google calendar integration
Choose personal activities for the week (limited to 3 at the moment)
Auto-generated schedule, based on user’s preferences

Next Steps

We are almost done with our MVP on the live site. But while we complete building out our MVP, we have a working prototype on Maze for user testing as well as to collect feedback.

We really envision my-time to be a one stop shop for you to feel productive and satisfied with the use of your time. That being said, we have broken down our next steps into two categories below:

Pending features to be implemented in the MVP:

Updates to web design, optimized for mobile
Fully functional google calendar integration
Rejig functionality to provide different versions of what the calendar could look like

Future features:

Calendar optimization: activities will be slotted only in available windows
Functionality to add more than 3 activities
Integration of other planning tools: tasks, reminders etc
Integrating other calendars

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Design

Lo-Fi Mock-ups

Landing: Not very detailed

Activity Selection/Details: not as accessible

Schedule: No re-jig button

Hi-fi Mock-ups

Learnings

Product Manager Learnings:

Biyanka Datta

Key to building a great product is to fall in love with the problem
Being open minded about what a solution would like; the job to done will remain the same, but the solution might evolve
Leadership is about influence, encouragement, problem solving and thinking about things top-down as well as ground-up

Designer Learnings:

Darliny Ayala Spencer

Have one foot in the present, and one in the future
Communicate often, be transparent
Adapt, while still tying back to our user’s needs

Designer Learnings:

Jo Sturdivant

Adapting to an Established Team: Joining the team in week 6 of 8 was challenging, as I had to quickly adapt to existing workflows, dynamics, and goals. This mirrors real-world situations where you often integrate into teams mid-project, and flexibility is essential.
Work-Blocking for Efficiency: With only two weeks to complete the project, I learned the importance of a structured work-blocking system. This approach allowed me to manage my time effectively and meet deadlines under pressure.
Making Data-Driven Design Decisions: Unlike my past projects, I had to rely on research conducted by others. This was a valuable experience in using pre-existing data to guide design decisions, helping me focus on the core insights without starting from scratch.

Developer Learnings:

Baldeep Parihar

Time management and time estimation. Be realistic with what is possible.
Be open to pivot and realise when to “leave” a task because it is taking up too much time compared to what else needs to be done
Trying things out that don’t work out the way you want doesn’t necessarily mean it is time wasted because it is still knowledge gained.

Developer Learnings:

Vanady Beard

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As the back-end developer, I learned how important it is to create efficient and reliable systems that support the entire application. This experience also taught me the importance of optimising the database and ensuring the backend is scalable and easy to maintain.

Developer Learnings:

Stephen Asiedu

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As a back-end developer, I've come to understand the importance of being familiar with various database systems and modules. This knowledge enables me to build diverse applications and maintain versatility in my work. I've also learned that the responsibility for making the right choices rests on my shoulders, guided by my best judgement.

Developer Learnings:

Hanne Hedegaard

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I learned how to work in a team with a PM and a UX designer and another Web Developer
I understand the job of a Software Developer more clearly
I got better at reading the documentation during the CoLab process

Developer Learnings:

Maurquise Williams

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Process of Creating an MVP: Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) taught me how to focus on delivering core functionalities balancing between essential features and avoiding scope creep.
Collaboration in a Real-World Tech Setting: This experience taught me how to collaborate efficiently in a fast-paced tech environment, keeping the team aligned and productive, even while working remotely across time zones.
Sharpening Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills: This experience honed my ability to think critically and solve problems efficiently. By tackling challenges and finding quick solutions, I sharpened my decision-making and troubleshooting skills in a dynamic, real-world setting.

Developer Learnings:

Jeremiah Williams

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All in all this experience was very awesome I learned that in coding with others being transparent is key

Developers Learnings:

Justin Farley

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I learned how important communication is when working with a team. Communication provides understanding, advice, ideas, and much more. While working with the product team, I’ve found that communication keeps everything flowing smoothly. Working with a team also showed me that every member brings something different to the table and we all have to work together in order to align and meet our end goal.

Full Team Learning

Communicating problems with each other allowed us to think outside the box. This helped us navigate hurdles better, together. Sharing our highlights and struggles with the team helps with gaining some clarity and encouragement.

At the end of the day being there for each other and feeling comfortable in sharing is everything.

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