For our first step in the user-centered design process, our team conducted interviews with potential users who were balancing work, school, and other responsibilities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our interviewees came from a variety of backgrounds to ensure that their responses represented a wide range of users. Our research allowed us to get a better understanding of our potential users’ needs, goals, behaviors, and pain points related to managing their work and personal lives. We found our interviewees all experienced some overlap between their work and personal lives, and they generally struggled with productivity and feelings of loneliness when working from home. These insights helped us define the problem of how to support users in maintaining a healthy work-life balance during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Our team's research findings were then compiled and synthesized to create personas that embody our potential user’s overall experiences, needs, behaviors, and goals.

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Each member of our team also completed a competitive analysis write-up of an existing solution for our work-life balance problem space. These insights into products that already exist, how they address the problem, and what they fail to address helped inform our design decisions in the steps to follow.