OVERVIEW

ShiftOS is a mobile operating system built for the working professional. With a system that learns from both the user and their environment, ShiftOS aims to create a personalized experience that transforms the busy lives of working professionals so that they can improve the amount of work they accomplish, both inside and outside of work. With a color scheme that shifts based on the time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, & night) and with the weather highly integrated throughout ShiftOS's applications, our mobile operating system strives to keep users connected to the outside world, even from inside the office.

THE PROBLEM

Current mobile operating systems (Android, iOS, etc.) meet the needs of the general public, but for those looking for more of a personalized and curated experience, these operating systems often fall short of both expectations and needs. Working professionals are often tasked with keeping track of multiple schedules throughout the week, both inside and outside of work, and usually use multiple apps to do so. This makes it quite difficult to integrate all of the person's information throughout the entire operating system, especially when third party applications are used. Ensuring that all of these different apps stay in sync and organized becomes time consuming and demanding for the user.

USER RESEARCH

How are working professionals currently using their phones to aid them inside and outside of the work place?

To understand how mobile phones are being used during and after work and what features are the most useful for successfully getting through the day, we conducted three semi-structured interviews with people who fit into our target user group of working professionals. We chose to target users who worked full-time and expressed an interest in using their phones to better manage their day and stay connected with the world outside of work. Through these interviews we learned that working professionals often waste unnecessary time navigating through their phone to find specific apps due to their phone's lack of overall organization.

We identified the following problems:

• It's difficult to organize different apps by their type with their current mobile OS (regardless of brand).

• The default apps that come with the phone are often removed in favor of other apps that perform much better.

• The searching functionality of their phone is often inaccurate and displays irrelevant results.

We learned that as a result working professionals are often left unsatisfied with their current mobile operating system and the default applications that installed on it. Since they believe that they are missing out on better features found in other third-party apps, they often abandon the core features of their phone in favor of other apps that perform better for their needs, but lack integration with the other apps on the rest of their phone.

USER PERSONAS

Based on our user research, we created two user personas that express both the needs and desires of working professionals when they interact with mobile operating systems. Our target users informed us that they:

• Want a system that learns from their habits and doesn't require them to do the customization.

• Desire minimal distractions so that they can accomplish tasks more efficiently.

• Want to feel more connected with the outside world while at the office.

• Wish to maintain control over their personal identity and details.

• Need to keep calls, texts, and emails from coworkers organized.

Overall, we discovered that organization and time management were the top qualities that our users aspired to achieve in their daily lives. This is why we believe that a simplistic mobile operating system with minimal distractions will let our target user group not only accomplish tasks more efficiently, but also maintain their desired connection with the world around them.

DESIGN SPRINTS

Over a course of ten weeks, we conducted a total of five two-week design sprints in which we used sketching, wireframing, and prototyping to design the interfaces of the 15 core applications, plus the home and lock screens, that are a part of our new mobile operating system. As a team of seven individuals that all had different levels of proficiency with design programs and had drastically different design styles, we worked tremendously hard during these sprints to create an operating system that was not only cohesive, but also met all of the goals needed to satisfy our target user group.

INITIAL DESIGN

During the first sprint, we figured out the user group we wanted to target and began doing preliminary sketches detailing how we wanted the home screen and notification center of our operating system to work. We knew from the beginning that we wanted the home screen to incorporate the user's most frequently used apps along the top of the screen. With this kind of set up, users are always shown the apps that are the most relevant to them rather than just being shown their entire app library, which can be overwhelming and confusing to navigate through. For the notification center, we employed a similar organization technique and sorted the user's apps that currently have notifications by how often they are used. Individual notifications are sorted in chronological order beneath these apps.

At the end of the first sprint, we settled on a lock screen design and revised our initial home screen sketch. With this lock screen design users easily see which of their applications have notifications when they immediately wake up their phone. These apps are sorted by most frequently used, so users are exposed to the apps that matter the most first. With our revised home screen design, we opted to reduce the number of apps displayed per row to make it easier for the user to find their desired app more quickly. We also removed the suggestions area from our initial design as this area seemed redundant since the area above it was also based on suggestions that changed based on the time of day. The search area on the home screen was also made more prominent because we always want our users to find what they need at the tip of their fingers.

STYLE GUIDES

During the second sprint, we began to iterate on the design guidelines and color schemes we would use for our mobile operating system design in the rest of our sprints. The following guidelines ensured that our team stayed consistent while designing and created content that would share all of the intended design choices for our target users:

After defining the basic design elements of our operating system, we began deciding how the color schemes of ShiftOS would shift and change based on the time of day. We initially had designed color schemes for five day transitions (sunrise, morning, afternoon, dusk, night), but we ended up cutting it down into four transitions (morning, after, evening, and night) by the end of the third sprint. This reduced our scope and made the transitions blend together better overall and was less distracting to our user because the colors changed less often. Initially utilizing a mood board assisted us in gathering inspiring applications and pictures that helped us find appropriate colors for each of the color schemes we needed.

These guidelines served as helpful tools for the seven of us as we went on to begin designing the core features of ShiftOS. Questions about many design decisions were easily answered with these guides and they served to ensure that design work done independently would match the design style of the entire team more consistently. Although, of course, the guidelines created at the beginning of the ten weeks was susceptible to changes and alterations to always make certain that we were meeting our users' goals of being: efficient, simplistic, and adaptable.

For the final three sprints, we worked both collaboratively and individually on specific apps. At the end of each sprint, we came together to discuss if changes needed to be made to any application before the final sprint and, if needed, we would continue to reiterate on apps until they achieved our aforementioned goals.

THE OPERATING SYSTEM

Our goal is to create a mobile operating system that learns from both the user and their environment in order to create a personalized experience. With a color scheme that shifts with the time of day and with the weather heavily integrated throughout our operating system, we strive to keep our users connected with the outside world, even when they may be stuck inside the office.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

ShiftOS is based off of three core design principles that encapsulate all of the goals we wanted to achieve with our design:

• Efficiency: limit the number of screens a user must go through to accomplish their task.

• Simplicity: appeal to those who don't prefer to do their own customization and personalization.

• Adaptability: most used apps change based on the time of day; color scheme changes to complement time.

LOCK SCREEN

The lock screen of our operating system was the first place that we learned to apply the design decisions from our design guidelines into our actual work. This is also the only place where we created high fidelity mockups of every color scheme. We ended up choosing to mockup the rest of ShiftOS in only the evening color scheme (third mockup) due to the time constraint of the class.

The purpose of transitioning the color schemes based on time of day is to help keep the user connected with the outside world. While stuck in the office, the user may lose track of time or even forget to look outside to see what the weather is like. The lock screen, and the rest of the operating system, uses these different color schemes in order to maintain this connection. Current weather conditions are also displayed in the top left corner along with a semi-transparent icon in the background to quickly reveal to the user what the weather is like without forcing them to open the weather app itself.

To minimize distractions during and outside of work, notifications are grouped by category so that the actual notification is never displayed on the screen unless the application is opened.

NAVIGATION

To minimize the amount of vertical movement required of users' hands and fingers to navigate through our operating system, we opted to use both a physical home button and an on-screen bottom navigation bar. A simple push of the home button brings the user back to the home screen of ShiftOS or a long press of the home button brings up the bottom navigation bar on-screen instead. With a quick swipe upwards, the user can access either the universal search, notification center, or settings. Found to the left and right of on-screen home button is a back button that brings the user backwards and a tab button that shows the user's currently opened applications respectively.

With all of the most important navigation located at the bottom of the phone, users always have the most convenient access to the navigation features that they use the most. To accommodate users who may opt to use either their left or right hand predominantly when using their phone, ShiftOS's settings allow the on-screen navigation bar to be flipped in order to make it more comfortable for the user's hand.

BUILT-IN SEARCH

ShiftOS is designed with a built-in search that is easily accessible from any app at any time. This convenience ensures that users are able to find what they need quickly with a minimal amount of effort.

From the home screen users see their top nine most frequently used applications displayed at the top. These suggestions are different depending on the time of day, as users are more likely to be using different apps when they wake up, while they're at work, and after they arrive home from a long day at the office. By adjusting these suggestions based on the time of day, users are greeted with applications that are the most relevant to them based on what they're more likely to be doing at a particular time based on past usage.

Although, if users cannot find the app they need from these recommendations, their recent searches are displayed along with the ability to perform a new search if needed by tapping the magnifying glass icon. If a user needs to access the universal search from within an app, a long press of the physical home button along with a swipe up will make searching available. Searches can be performed over the entire phone or can be filtered to only search particular apps, such as the calendar.

APPLICATIONS

ShiftOS consists of 15 core applications that fall under the categories of communication, productivity, and information. I worked mainly on the calendar, music player, and camera apps either individually or collaboratively with other team members. I also worked on the home screen and built-in search design for our operating system as well. All of these apps were designed in the evening color scheme in order to narrow our scope and to prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed.

At the end of the ten weeks, I was one of several team members that went over all of the components and ensured that all design elements had consistent attributes for things such as width, margin, font size, color, etc.

CALENDAR

Since ShiftOS targets working professionals, one of the first applications we took on was the calendar. With this app, the goal was to make it easy for our target user group to quickly discover what kinds of events they have scheduled for the current day, the upcoming week, and even the entire month.

Each day on the calendar that has an event scheduled for that day has a small circle denoting that there is an upcoming event. Below the calendar, users can find the upcoming events for the next week with each color coded based on the category that the event falls under. Users are free to create as many categories as they want in order to label their events with, which helps them keep their events organized and prioritized. Tapping on any of the dates on the calendar itself brings up all of the events scheduled for that particular day as well.

Tapping on any of the events brings up additional details about the event, such as it's date, time, location, the weather for that day, and how many people are either going, might go, or can't go. By knowing how many people can attend an event, our users can be better prepared to know who is expected to show up and who isn't. Both the creator of the event and those invited can also leave comments, which is helpful if there are questions or if attendees need to get into contact with someone else who is going.

One of the notable changes we made to the calendar included adding the event's expected weather to the upcoming events section for the next week. This way our users can know what to expect for the weather during their event without having to open the weather app specifically. We also added the amount of time it takes to drive to the event's location to the outside of the events as well, so that users can stay up to date on the current time it takes to drive there, which can change depending on traffic conditions. With this information, users don't have to open up their maps app to know exactly how long it's going to take to drive there and this also ensures that users won't be late.

We also made all calendar events shareable, so that users don't have to resort to third-party applications for these features and can instead rely on the calendar app built right into their phone. This way users, both inside and outside of the office, can keep track of all of their events in one place instead of being overwhelmed with the task of trying to remember all of the events they said they were attending on other apps.

MUSIC PLAYER

For the initial design of the music player application, most of the emphasis was placed on showcasing the music's album art and the actual content of the albums. By using circles, the user's eyes are drawn inwards towards the album art itself. The user's current progress in a song is being kept track of in a circle surrounding the album art, which was a convenient location for users to look to if they were curious about how much of the song was left to be played.

We opted for a darker background for the evening color scheme rather than a gradient one because we wanted the album art and other content to stand out without being overshadowed by a potentially busy background. We also wanted our users to focus primarily on finding the music they want to listen to rather than being distracted by the color scheme being used. Instead, we used the colors from the gradient as accent colors in order to place emphasis on things such as the current song playing or call to action buttons.

CAMERA

The camera application was built for both users who are experienced with cameras and those who aren't. We discovered that our target user group liked to be able to document their life both inside and outside of work, but always found themselves using different camera apps depending on the occasion. To prevent our users from having to download third party apps, instead we created a camera app that lets users easily switch from using manual settings to automatic depending on the types of photos they are taking. Features such as filters and other camera settings were also included so that users had complete control over how their photos looked.

The final iteration for the camera application stayed relatively the same due to the fact that we had a clear vision of this application from the beginning due to our gathered user research. Users simply choose from manual or automatic settings once they open the camera application and can edit their photos right in the same application as soon as they are taken. This completely eliminates the need to download other applications and users no longer have to spend unnecessary time importing and exporting photos between multiple different applications.

REFLECTION

ShiftOS received positive reception from the judges and our professor who looked over our applications every two weeks. They could tell that each of our applications went with the same operating system due to the consistent design choices we made and the cohesiveness between every screen. This project taught our entire team that sticking with a style guide and a UI pattern kit was essential in creating applications that all looked like they belonged to the same mobile operating system. Although, if there was additional time we would have liked to:

• Test our high fidelity mockups with our target user group in order to discover what their thoughts were on our final design after the initial interviews.

• Identify additional areas where we could have improved our mobile operating system to better assist working professionals in their every day life, especially outside of work where our emphasis was less prominent.

The entire design process helped us learn that creating a final, cohesive product can be difficult at times. As each sprint went by, we made minor changes to the overall design of our operating system, but we neglected to go back and make these changes in our previous applications. By saving all of this work for the final day of the class, we put tremendous stress on our entire team to make sure every screen looked consistent. It was also stressful to make last minute design decisions to fix contradictory design rules that we were following. This insight has definitely taught me to start making these changes early in the process as they are made, so that it's much easier later to ensure everything looks good together.