Dash
Web Application Concept
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Timeline
May - June 2023
DESCRIPTION
A dashboard concept that allows users to monitor different apps on one page.
CONTEXT
I designed a concept web application where users can add widgets from different apps onto a singular dashboard page.
With this, users are able to save time and screen space while keeping track of any connected account.
Background
With professionals checking multiple email accounts, work and personal chats, reminders, notes, and calendar events daily, there is an opportunity to create a better experience for monitoring these frequently used applications. With this in mind, I conceptualized a dashboard that could centralize all these accounts to help users more efficiently keep track of their most used applications.
How can we improve the virtual workspace for young professionals by streamlining the daily process of monitoring many applications?
Solution
A visually simple dashboard
An effective dashboard is one where users can get the information they need with just a glance, so visual clarity within the dashboard is integral. Several of the following features of the dashboard assist users with being able to quickly monitor different apps.
Widget branding
The visual branding of each widget is taken from the application itself to make it more recognizable — less mental load on the user in searching for the application.
Notifications
Aggregated notifications and badges helps users see which apps have new notifications from a high-level overview.
Dashboard customization to suit user needs
Grouping Widgets as Pages
Users wanted to group widgets into different pages, keeping work and personal accounts separate.
Multiple App Accounts
Since users may have multiple accounts for one app, I designed a seamless experience for users to add widgets that are linked to different accounts for the same app.
Research
Competitor Analysis
Similar applications exist where users can aggregate links to websites, but most are not optimized for the dynamic apps we have today.
Cluttered & old
Existing personalized start pages are information overloaded and dated.
Low visibility
Built-in web browser bookmarks lack visibility and easy access.
No messages
Desktop widgets are hidden and lack widgets from messaging platforms.
Notably, most of these competitors only track external feeds and do not monitor the states of messaging platforms.
User Interviews
4 participants, 1 hour each
To achieve a better understanding of user pain points, I conducted preliminary user research.
Tab and window management can be difficult
Users tend to have many tabs open, making it difficult to find pages and keep track of page content. Current split-screen options also limit screen real estate.
Bookmarks are not enough
Some users organize their webpages using bookmarks, but some may have difficulty with finding the correct sites due to poor organization and lack of visibility when there is more than one level of hierarchy.
Current applications are lacking
Users did not know about native widgets on desktop OS’s because they were hidden. They did not want to use applications like Notion because the learning curve was too high and they did not incorporate social media widgets.
Repositioning Goals
The initial goal of this project was to design a dashboard that would centralize links to apps more visibly. However, after receiving user feedback, I shifted my goal to focus on the monitoring and functional aspect that users desired and current applications lacked.
How might we allow users to efficiently monitor many different applications at once? How might we allow users to customize their dashboard to suit their needs?
User Persona
Design
Moodboard
To improve upon existing start pages, I chose a modern theme that was clean and minimalist. The main dashboard page was inspired by Bento, and I referenced iOS widget designs.
Iteration
Paper Wireframes: What should the widgets look like?
Initial user feedback showed that people preferred different levels of functionality for different types of widgets. Since larger widgets have more potential for functionality, I created brainstormed several sizes of widgets with varying levels of interaction potential.
Low Fidelity Wireframes: Encountering a design challenge
How do we make signing into multiple accounts for different widgets effortless? To streamline this process, I created a clear user flow and utilized single sign-on (SSO) in the flow.
Early Feedback: Making widget configuration more straightforward
A second round of user interviews on the high-fidelity prototype revealed a key piece of feedback: the widget configuration process needed to be more straightforward.
Instead of showing users all three parts of the process at once, I modified the design to only show the next step after users had completed the prior step to guide them along a linear path.
Before
Showing all the steps at once can be overwhelming and confusing
After
Showing steps one at a time helps to guide users
Limitations & Feasibility
Although this is primarily a concept, there are feasibility aspects to this product that should be addressed.
In the real world, widgets depend on third-party companies.
Widgets today are developed by the application's company itself and aggregated on a platform like iOS or and MacOS. While some apps provide developer APIs to help other third parties create integrations, most apps do not.
Since developers of each company would be the one to create their respective widget, they would have sole control over how the widgets look, how information each user can derive from the widget, and how much users can interact with the widget. This may result in in the widgets not being cohesive across all apps.
Potential pitfalls and possibilities of third-party reliance.
The availability of widgets for apps can be very limited. Why is this? Companies may not be incentivized to produce widgets — either because they don't see that users will actually use the widget or a widget for the product would not make sense.
If Dash were a real product, a short term goal could be to partner with companies who make popular apps to make widgets by paying them. If Dash were to become a popular product, companies could become self-motivated to develop widgets because their user base could increase.
The existence of Dash as a proof of concept can also serve to show companies a possible solution that they could eventually integrate into their existing products (e.g. Dash as a default Chrome homepage).
Validation
updated October 2023
A couple weeks after I finished this case study, Apple announced the release of widgets, a modern version of their old Dashboard feature from 2004 (that I had unfortunately not found during my competitive analysis).
This reintroduction of widgets supports the notion that in this current digital landscape, users need a way to efficiently gain an overview of commonly used apps.
Image credit: Apple
Notably, MacOS widgets do not include key communication apps like Gmail and Messenger, which may indicate similar roadblocks for Dash if it were to be implemented IRL.
Reflection
This idea was conceived when I was using Bento, an application that allows you to add 'widgets' to your custom profile that were essentially links in a more visual form. Seeing that the main purpose of Bento is to allow other people to learn more about you, I wondered: what if we could gather all the apps we use in widget form so that we could see and use them on one page?
Through this project, I learned (again) that what I think may be an interesting idea may not be useful to others—user research is essential. Thus, after talking to people, I pivoted from Dash being a link aggregator to more of a monitoring dashboard—something that users saw as more useful in saving them screen real estate and time.
