This is a storyboard of "Tasks.", a visual planner designed for people who are working on multiple long-term tasks at the same time.
You can "Add Projects" to "Tasks." and break down each project in to single steps "tasks". You can decide the deadline, duration, importance of each tasks, and "Tasks." will turn your tasks into bubbles. The size of the bubble represent the time you need to complete the task, the deadline of the task is labeled on the bubble, and the opacity of the bubble represents the importance / priority. Each project and its tasks are color coded and labeled with abbreviation of the project name.
In "Plan" mode, you will be asked to drag and drop the bubbles onto your weekly timetable. Bubbles cannot be overlapped with one another, which helps you visualize your daily capacity as well as each long term path. You can change the start and end time of each day to fit more tasks if needed, or slice time-consuming tasks into multiple small bubbles to fit into your fragmented availability. "Tasks." also has a daily planner which allows you to block out hours that you need for daily events, appointments, meetings.
With this visual planner, optimizing the best work flow for your multiple tasks becomes a no brainer bubbly game. Once everything is planned out, what you need to do is simply following the plan, and focus on one thing at a time. "Tasks." keeps track of everything.
As a multitasker myself, I find the most difficult part in multitasking is distraction. I find myself hard to focus when I am working on one task, because I would keep wondering if I will have enough time to work on my other tasks, how to, at what time, etc. It is also hard to keep track of all the working paths and deadlines.
Planning comes in handy. Simply listing out all the projects and all the tasks I need to complete to finish each project helps reduce anxiety. However, my own capacity to work on those projects varies from day to day, and it's hard to find balance between short-term, daily event and my long term goals.
I designed "Tasks." to be a bridge between the two essential questions in any type of planning: 1) what kind of resource do I have to complete the goal? 2) how much is the workload? In this storyboard demonstration, my solution is to physicalize / visualize the answers to both questions. I turned one's time capacity into a blank canvas, and turned the tasks into bubbles that have different size and opacity. By moving the bubbles around, fitting them onto the canvas, a work flow and to-do list is naturally generated in the process. The users can then fine tune their schedule with additional information like commute, rush hour, collaborative projects and so on.
This design has no user test yet, and I am waiting for an opportunity to further develop it to make it a useful tool to help with modern people's busy life.