Problem

College students and young adults often struggle with a packed schedule involving classes, homework, and work shifts. With so many tasks to do at various times, it can be easy to forget or mix up when assignments are due, forgetting to eat and not having enough time to sleep. This can lead to missed deadlines, skipped meals, and poor sleep, which affects their health and grades.

Solution

A tool that helps create a schedule based on one’s personal goals?
An assistant that helps one navigate an overwhelming schedule while balancing personal time, while also being engaging for users.

1. A calendar and daily activities displayed on the landing page for easy viewing access.
2. AI chatbot/assistant to help with scheduling
3. Letting users color code or apply a label that symbolizes urgency/importance to certain activities
4. Offer flexible and scheduling options for user to complete their activities if they are missed and to adjust as needed.
5. Add rewards and badges when users complete there specified tasks
6. Customizable avatars

Empathize

The objective in this stage of the design thinking process was to explore potential design challenges faced by college students and young adults in managing busy schedules. Specifically, the goal was to understand how current scheduling tools meet or fail to meet their needs, with an emphasis on creating a personalized AI-driven app that helps users balance their time for sleep, socializing, and other activities. The interview we conducted provided valuable insights on the frustrations and gaps in existing tools, such as the lack of alarms. 

Me and my team interviewd 9 people total. With the demographic being working and non working college students.

Empathy Map

We then created empathy maps to better understand a person or group by exploring what they say, think, feel, and do. To gain deeper insights into their needs, motivations, and challenges.

Thematic Analysis

We used thematic analysis method to identify, analyze, patterns within our data. It helps you organize and describe the data in detail by finding common ideas or topics that come up repeatedly.

Theme 1. Users do not fully trust their tools.
Trust ranges from:

• “Not at all”
• “General outline”
• “Pretty good”
• “A lot”

Theme 2. Many participants operate reactively:

• Prioritize when deadlines are close
• Beg professors after missing assignments
• Adjust after emergencies
• Delete/edit when things shift
• Handle urgent items first

Theme 3: Social Coordination Friction
Patterns include:

• Friends not responding
• People not using scheduling tools
• Difficulty aligning availability
• Desire for shared availability visibility
• Frustration when others are abstract about time

The interviews reveal that users struggle with trust, reactivity, and social coordination, which together create unstable and stressful planning experiences.

First, users do not fully trust their tools. Trust ranges from “not at all” to “a lot,” but most participants treat tools as rough guides rather than dependable systems. T

Second, many users operate in a reactive mode. Meaning they prioritize tasks only when deadlines are near, adjust plans after emergencies, and focus on urgent items over long-term priorities.

Third, users face significant social coordination friction. Friends may not respond, others avoid scheduling tools, and aligning availability is difficult. Participants express frustration with vague time commitments and desire clearer shared visibility.

Overall, users have uncertainty about their tools, their time, and other people. This drives reactive behavior, reduces system reliability, and complicates coordination. The challenge is not just scheduling tasks, but creating a trustworthy, proactive, and social system for managing time.