CONCEPTUAL REDESIGN
Asana helps organizations orchestrate their work, from small projects to strategic initiatives. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Asana has more than 135,000* paying customers and millions of free organizations in over 200 countries and territories. Global customers such as Amazon, Affirm, Japan Airlines, and Sky rely on Asana to manage everything from company objectives to digital transformation to product launches and marketing campaigns.
Asana needs users to find more benefits for their app and my group and I at General Assembly set out to add a new feature and redesign an existing one, to draw more users. The project management software market is set to triple in yearly revenue 10 years, so staking claim as a key player in the PM Software space is crucial for Asana and its partners.
Asana
Mobile App
*3rd Quarter Fiscal 2023 Statement 12.1.22
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Role
Team
Tools
Duration
UX/ UI Designer
3 UX/ UI Designers
Figma + Figjam + Canva + Sheets
3 UX/ UI Designers
Scope of Work:
Over the course of two weeks, our team worked to create a new feature and redesign an existing feature to meet Asana’s business goals and user’s expectations.
Asana offers an array of solutions that make it easy for teams to manage projects and tasks.
A few key features include automation of workflows, the ability to view tasks on a Kanban board, calendar, Gantt charts and portfolio views - which lets users see a holistic view of all the projects contained within, along with their progress percentage.
We set out to test an initial problem statement/ hypothesis:
DISCOVER
Project managers need a way to develop a project plan with their team, manage their tasks, and report on overall progress so that they can have a transparent source of truth, collaborate with their teammates, and hold individuals accountable for getting work done.
C&C Analysis
To gain a better view of the Project Management software landscape and understand Asana's business framework, we conducted a C&C Feature Analysis with Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Jira and Monday.com. During our research we identified that these are the most common platforms that teams are engaging with.
Asana does not have the following features:
Ability to create a word document within a task
Filter features on calendar view
Ability to see task owners in calendar view
A map feature
Ability to assign more than one person to a task
Asana does have:
Full user control to collaborate between teams
Customizable board columns
Over 200 integrations to choose from
Through our survey we conducted, we were able to provide insight into what users generally thought about project management apps. A few takeaways included:
The project management platform most used by our survey takers were Trello and Asana (5/14 and 4/14, respectively)
71% Age 25-34
86% Use Project Management Software for work
Top 3 Features used across all PM Platforms:
Task Management
Progress Reporting
Team Calendars
User Survey
When asked 3 words to describe their experience using PM applications, the main themes were:
"Easy, Simple, Affordable"
User Interviews
We interviewed 9 users of project management applications to dive deeper into the discovery phase. We uncovered 2 main themes after analyzing the affinity map we had created.
For Theme 1 we found that project planning is difficult to do within the PM software itself. Users often drew up thoughts and ideas for projects on different apps like Google Docs or through Slack and email chains. So the initial step is rough for leaders because of the scattered information and time wasted searching for specific details.
For Theme 2 we noticed the amount of users that relied on task lists and calendars to see what needs to get done in their projects. Having a visual guide to each day really helps save time and keeps them organized within their team.
We also noticed that many users use these PM tools for work and therefore use the desktop version rather than the app, as they are by their computer for most the day.
Through our surveys and interviews, we were able to create a persona of a typical user and identify common goals, needs and frustrations. With this persona we were able to really focus on the user at hand and define our main problem.
Persona
To truly empathize with Simon and our users, we created a retrospective journey map. Simon is overwhelmed in the beginning of the process and also stressed during the tracking phase which go along with the themes we revealed from our user interviews.
DEFINING OUR USER ISSUES
Problem Statement
Simon needs a way to start planning for a project with his team and quickly report on overall progress so that they can have a transparent source of truth to collaborate with teammates.
Our problem statement and How Might We's helped us narrow down which aspects and features of the Asana app to best focus our efforts on for this project.
Proposed Solutions
We proposed 2 solutions to best assist users with their current pain points in project planning:
Currently in Asana, projects can only be initiated by creating a "new project" on the app and can be quite cumbersome if you haven't quite figured out who is addressing each task.
We also drew inspiration from Trello in our C&C Analysis which offers a collaboration board for users to view in real-time.
User interviews informed us that the planning process begins outside of the app in platforms such as Slack and Google Sheets.
The team task calendar is currently unable to show the whole team or individual tasks to check the status of a project.
We noticed competitors offer a filter feature on their calendar view, giving more power to each user to visually see exactly what they need.
User interviews told us that users are frustrated the app does not include reminders if a task is overdue past the projected date.
DESIGN PROCESS
Sketches
Team Task Calendar
Midfi Wireframes
Hifi Wireframes
Usability Testing
We had two main tasks within our usability test scenario:
1. To put together a plan for how you and your team will conduct a newly assigned project
2. Viewing the calendar to track the progress of your team's tasks
In both rounds of testing we had 4 users go through the two tasks and captured key insights and metrics that helped inform our design iterations.
Round 1
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Make icons more prominent or clear (I.e. create new project, add template, comment and add team member)
Remove need to double click to move on to next screen
Make filling out notes more intuitive by tapping to add text
Improve filter dropdown location and functionality
Remove calendar view filter and enable view selection directly on calendar
Round 2
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Expand clickable areas
Highlight the start and end date on the calendar when users make a selection
Provide guidance on how to use the calendar selector
Make filling out notes more intuitive by tapping to add text
Remove calendar view filter and enable view selection directly on calendar
Improve filter dropdown location and functionality
NEXT STEPS & RECOMMENDATIONS
With the addition of these features and recommended improvements, we would hope to see increased usage of the Asana mobile app and increase user retention and continue to attract new users to the Asana platform for years to come.
Asana Prototype
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