UI/UX Design Project - Mobile Design
INTRODUCTION
Competitive exam preparation often overwhelms students with vast syllabi, rigid expectations, and intense time pressure. Traditional manual planners and generic apps lack adaptability and fail to address individual behavioral and emotional needs.
Timely was conceived as an AI-powered, personalized study timetable app to simplify scheduling, sustain motivation, and support mental well-being throughout rigorous exam journeys.
Make study planning seamless and non-overwhelming.
Turn study routines into engaging, gamified experiences.
Help users build confidence through visual progress and achievable goals.
Support consistency by integrating rewards and psychological reinforcement.
Timely dynamically generates personalized study plans, visualizes progress, and leverages gamification to drive long-term engagement. It adapts in real time to users’ performance, mood, and availability, turning daunting routines into rewarding experiences.
Core features include:
AI‑Powered Study Planner with dynamic time‑block allocation
Intelligent Motivation Center: points, badges, and comparative insights
Progress Visualization: subject mastery color maps and readiness scores
Post‑Session Interventions: quizzes, rewards, and motivational feedback
A structured onboarding journey familiarizes the user with the platform’s offerings, creating a sense of clarity and direction. By tailoring the experience through plan generation and setup screens, users are guided to form a meaningful first connection with the tool, increasing the likelihood of long-term engagement.
Empowering users to build a personalized study plan either from scratch or via smart recommendations cultivates a sense of control and ownership. This planning ritual transforms abstract goals into concrete steps, reducing decision fatigue and increasing accountability.
A focused and modular study experience, complete with task information, progress markers, and a dedicated focus mode helps users stay immersed and productive. The stepwise breakdown of tasks into achievable units encourages momentum, while the quit confirmation screen reinforces a habit of completion over abandonment.
A quantitative measure of progress and rewarded behavior helps keep the user aligned with their goals by introducing a positive reinforcement cycle. Insights into streaks, subject-wise analysis, and task completion provide both motivation and actionable feedback, turning raw data into meaningful self-awareness.
Want to experience Timely yourself? Try out the Figma Prototype below! :)
Prototype Link
Goals:
Understand real-life challenges faced by students
Identify behavioral patterns affecting study consistency
Discover motivation factors that influence study habits
Determine what elements make study planning effective
What are the primary barriers preventing students from maintaining consistent study schedules?
How do students currently plan and track their study progress?
What motivational factors help students maintain study discipline?
How do different personality types approach study planning?
What technological features would most effectively support students' study efforts?
All interviewees expressed that their experience is heavily influenced by the time and convenience. Their decisions are factored by the time and place they shop, time they spend finding the right products and at checkout.
QUOTE
"There’s so much to study and so little time! I just need a way to stay organized without feeling overwhelmed!"
-Priya Mehta
Organizing the notes, quotes, and data from my research through affinity mapping.
Priya Metha Persona
User Flow for Timely
Mental blockades from extensive content
Pressure and fear of failure
Motivation instability
Difficulty creating methodical plans
Lack of study discipline
Tendency to abandon study routines
Dramatic life pattern changes
Cognitive overwhelm
Poor self-management skills
Fluctuating internal motivation
Absence of personalized learning strategies
I asked few of my friends about the screens and took the insights from the feedback and made changes to the screens and the flow.
Redesigned Screen
Timely Typeface, Icons, Colors
Timely Components
Final Screens
Through iterative research, user‑centered design, and AI integration, Timely transforms study planning from a daunting task into an engaging, supportive journey. It not only schedules tasks but addresses the psychological barriers of competitive exam preparation, offering a future‑ready solution for learners to achieve clarity, consistency, and confidence.
WHAT I LEARNT
1. Building for emotional and cognitive needs is just as important as addressing functional requirements.Gamification, when done meaningfully, can drive real behavior change and user retention.Simple UI decisions (like drag‑and‑drop planning or animated feedback) significantly enhance usability.Iterative testing is invaluable: assumptions often break, and user input redefines priorities.Balancing data-driven design with empathy was key to creating a truly human-centered solution.
EDITORS NOTE
Timely started out as a project for my Honours Degree and bloomed into a project that brings me immense pride. I learnt so much about the mindset of students appearing for competitive exams or any exams really, it also made me reflect on how i prepare and study for my own exams! Designing this experience and the interfaces felt more simpler and organized this time around, which again, I’m proud of how it turned out :)
Got a creative idea? lET’S cONNECT
Whether you’re building something from scratch or just want to brainstorm an idea, I’d love to hear from you.
