UX nerd

So we (Natasha and me) finally didn’t work on the GPGP application I posted about. You can’t always make things that make you proud but you can always make things in a way that makes you proud. So, I guess I reconciled with the world, in a selfish way.

We ended up working in a kind of calendar/to-do/agenda/personal assistant application that prompts the user to carry out a task in the optimal context in time and space. This application would help the user manage his/her activities. For tasks that have a fixed scheduling, its functionality is limited to providing reminders, exactly as a regular calendar application would. However, for tasks that may be executed freely at any time before a given deadline, it suggests the best moment to do something using information about the nature of the task and the user’s preferences, live monitoring of his/her level of busyness, time, location, etc.

Before I explain how it would work, and because I can picture you shaking your head and tightening your lips, let me say something. This idea sounds familiar to you? Yes, to me too… When talking about applications that are supposed to be smart enough to suggest what you may or may not want to do, there’s a very thin line separating awesomness from complete failure. That’s what, I think, when you present an idea like this to people, makes people stand in two very distinct camps: either you love it or you hate it. There are few things, in UX, as polarizing as agents. I was very sceptical about this idea at first. Then something happened.

Continue reading ‘What we finally worked on’