The Product
VAYO is an AI-powered Desktop application that helps people at work focus on what is really important. In one unique place, users get a faster overview of their most important tasks originating from all the apps such as Gmail, Jira or Dropbox.
In fact, the company is targeting high-level executives or managers to help them be on top of everything and more productive by filtering the 5% of most important information - the rest is just noise. By connecting with other working tools, the platform aims at being the core launch for all the other working apps.
Concept
In VAYO’s term, ‘to focus’ equal ‘to search’. In fact, switching focus and thus searching for something is really about pulling data through natural language and finding what you are looking for.
You can talk to VAYO - write the AI what you need and he will get back to you with the most relevant data depending on the context, your habits or patterns. The algorithm will eventually learn from you and adapt to specific users with different roles at a company.
Wireframes
For the POC, we started with the landing screen or search result where the main component we defined is a grid of 6 cards prioritised by the level of urgency and importance. Scrolling down reveals another set of cards that comes next in terms of priority.
Types of cards can be files, messages (emails, chat or comments), events, or specific to a source application. We also defined the structure of each card by displaying the following main characteristic of a task: the source apps, users involved, the context or a preview. And for this early version, we concentrated on quick actions only such as deleting or marking done.
User flows
The main feature we focused on is naturally the search flow where the user can pull data by typing specific keywords. Using a conversational UI with natural languages such as keyboard shortcuts and special characters provides business users with a comfortable and quick way to ask questions and get answers quickly.
The default focus, #current focus is a fixed tag that shows the default view of 6 first cards that the AI has defined are the 6 main tasks at this moment.
Users can hit backspace and initiate a new search/focus. Tags categories include time, source app, user, or key work - for instance ‘today’, ‘/gmail’, ‘@gabriel’ or ‘#project voodoo’, and use specific special characters to differentiate them and make the search easier.
Design solutions
In order to visually translate the main product values - Control, Smart and Trust - I decided to go for a minimal and highly functional layout in order to convey a relax and calm feeling and increase the focus on the cards.
Playing with the roundness and floating effect of the cards also added a level of comfort to the screen while bold typography increased readability, and gradient/vibrant colours talked AI and technology.
Because the concept of ‘Focus’ is at the core of the app, I used its sharp and bright properties to give a fresh and calm look to the cards and this way representing the clear answer from the AI. I contrasted this search result (focus) screen with a blurry and dark version of the app to give rhythm and increase strength and readability.