Procrastinot is the software artifact of design science research in my Master’s thesis: a functional prototype of an app designed to alleviate procrastination in students.
This project was research oriented. I carried out a literature review to define the problem that my solution targets, used design principles discussed in academic works, developed the functional prototype, and orchestrated user tests to evaluate the design.
The thesis was a solo effort and had no customer. The topic was chosen out of personal interest.
View the open repository on GitHub. You can also read the user guide and installation instructions on the dedicated GitHub pages.
This was all me.
The most interesting topic in this project was persuasive systems design. In essence, carefully applying certain kind of software features which infuence the users behavior. This is a very relevant field of study in various health and lifestyle applications, but the ideas are applicable in almost any context. For instance, many of the template features to increase persuasiveness, promote overall usability of software and user engagement.
I also gained valuable experience in prototyping with a clear target and evaluation metrics. In other words, I gained knowledge in product development. It was great to see real data that revealed strengths and weaknesses in the design. I was able to reveal insights that could be used to make an improved future iteration.
Flutter and dart were new technologies for me during the development of Procrastinot. Overtime I begun to ask myself, why didn’t I learn Kotlin + Jetpack for Android development, as I did not have the necessary devices (or licenses) to build for iOS. Also, an usual issue of Android repeated: sudden death of background processes. I wished I would have had the native tools to define services intended to run in the background and comply better with the Android OS environment. Flutter proved to be quick for prototyping UI, but rather helpless in implementing platform and device specific features.