Clock App Redesign — UX Case Study
Intro
This project exists because of an UpLabs email that stated “Take the challenge - Redesign the existing Clock App”. After reading this, two things intrigued me:
• It is challenging me!
• What is wrong with the existing app?
P.S.: This project does not contain the user research as I wanted to know where can a project end if built entirely on the hypothesis.
Overview
A Clock App, that provides an overview of all the saved alarms and also gives data about long-lost alarms that have not been used for a while.
Research
After accepting the challenge, I opened the Clock App and examined it for 4 days, using all the features it offered, from Alarms to Stopwatch, and realized, one cannot check the time of Antarctica (IDK why). I also realized that one can also convert interchange time zones using World clock, which I think is an awesome feature.
Pain Points
I realized the following things were missing / could be added to improve usability:
• One has to scroll the app if he/she has set many alarms and for just the overview of the number of alarms and to edit the alarm which is below the stack.
- It would be better if I can take a look at all the alarms which have been shut down for a while but have not been deleted from the saved list.
Competition Analysis
I downloaded 2–3 clock apps to check if my phone has an outdated app and to also verify that all these apps provide the same features.
After exploring them for approximately 1 day, I came to the following analysis.
Challenge
Now, I broke the challenge into redesigning the app such that:
• One can take a look at all saved alarms without scrolling.
• One can also track which alarms have not been used for a while.
Sketching
With the fixed challenge in the mind, I started filling up the paper with whatever ideas crossed my mind to find a solution.
The idea, that really appealed to me was to indicate the number of alarms using a clock, but there were two problems with this:
- How to differentiate between AM and PM?
- Too many short interval alarms can confuse.
Refining
So, the existing problems required a refined sketch to overcome these problems, which led me to refine the sketch:
This is the final solution that I stumbled upon:
• Create two clocks to find the difference between AM — PM.
• Combine the alarm indication to one entity if the interval is something between 10 mins.
This solved two things
• Discarded confusion between alarms.
- A pleasing UI.
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
I move on to create mid-fi wireframes to get an idea of what this concept will look like as an actual app.
Final Design
Final Words
Overall I liked the challenge and learned some new and minor concepts of UX design. It was also fun to design something completely based on my Pain Points. I recommend this process only if someone is designing for fun!
Thanks for reading!
