Hi James,
 

Thanks for your email!
 

Taskly is an excellent tool and resource for project management. I’m definitely interested in working with your team to create an app for your service!
 

To successfully create a complementary Taskly app, in depth research of who the Taskly user is is crucial. Obviously we know some things that are crucial and will already be familiar to the user but we also want to determine what other options might a typical Taskly app user might want or need that no one else has. We want to make Taskly the go to project management app so we need to identify what it will have that no one else has. This leads to me to explaining how I would approach this project.

KNOWING THE USER
First and foremost, we will need to clearly define what the purpose of the Taskly app will be and who exactly is the Taskly user. What will they want to do with this app? How often will they use this app? What will they wish the app had?
 

Asking these questions will help us determine how we can create a useful and enjoyable experience for the typical Taskly user. We want Taskly to be their number one app for project management. In fact, we want Taskly to be THE number one project management app and we can make that happen when we know the user inside and out. We would develop from the Taskly user definition, and from that, develop three user personas to further help us specify what needs the user would need from the app and to help create a realistic user journey with the Taskly app.
 

The next step would be creating a flowchart of a typical experience for these personas in using the Taskly app. We want to know what the main tasks they need to achieve and what are things that might hinder them from achieving them. Here is also where we would also find something the competition is not addressing and how Taskly can address them.

SPEAKING ABOUT THOSE OTHER GUYS
Since we want Taskly to be the go-to project management app, we will also complete a competitor analysis of Asana, Basecamp, and any other project management sites and apps we can find. This includes reading their customer reviews and creating usability tests where to observe users using those sites and apps so we can analyse where we can improve or provide a service the competition lacks. By having features that aren’t in other project management apps, we can be sure that users will choose Taskly over the competition.  

 

CONTENT
Now that we now who the user is and what they want, we would need to create a content inventory of everything the app needs to include to be useful and enjoyable. Included in this will be a list of all the resources, from fact sheets to videos, our user personas and user journeys, our competitor analyses of what was used to create the content. By creating a content inventory, we can make sure to only include what the user needs and not have unnecessary steps to get from point A to point B. A content inventory will allow us to create an ease of flow.

LOOKS TEN
Once we’ve determined what content needs to be in the app, the next step is to determine how the user will get to the content they need. We will do this by creating a site map so we can determine how the navigation should be structured, what content goes where, as well as what content still needs to be produced. We want to make it as easy as possible for the Taskly user to get to where they want to go and make it feel as natural as possible to get there and to be able find what they need when they arrive.

From here we would go on to creating the wireframes, or a visual representation of the Taskly interface.  Once we’ve determined what we want the app to look like in terms of wireframing then we can go on to prototyping. That is, creating a realistic representation of how the app can be interacted with. It is with this prototype where we will start our user testing. 

ACING THE TEST
User testing will be where we will see the results of all our research of defining the user and analyzing the competition. Using our prototype, we will be able to narrow down what is, and is not, working with the Taskly app. We want to make sure that we’ve hit all the important elements that we’ve implemented and user testing will guarantee that.

Once we’ve developed our app design it would then be handed over to the developers to make it a reality!

 

TIMELINE
As for a timeline, a typical app of this scope, from beginning to end, takes approximately two and a half months.

Here I’ve broken down how I see that exact timeline working:

Week 1: Research & Planning: Who is the Taskly User?

         Deliverables:
 

·       Definition of the Taskly User’

·       3 User Personas

 

Week 2 :Research & Planning: Create Taskly App Mission Statement, Practices & Principles, Mesauring Success

Deliverables:

·       Mission Statement Document

·       Guiding Practices & Principles Document

·       Measuring Success Document
 

Week 3: Research and Planning: Competitive Analysis, including Pricing
 

Deliverables:

·       Competitive Analyses chart of Basecamp, Asana, and Trello

·       Pricing Guide
 

Week 4: Site Content: Defining Content for Taskly

Deliverables:

·       Content Inventory (index of all content, to allow for content organization)

 

Week 5: App Structure Development

Deliverables:

·       Map of User Journey/Navigation Flowchart

·       Site Map
 

Week 6: Visual Design: Layout Grids for the different settings/pages

Deliverables:

·       Wireframes for each page of Taskly

·       Prototypes for each page of Taskly
 

Week 7: Review of site users’ behaviour, App Revisions

Deliverables:

·     User and staff interviews and testing of draft app organization
·     App Revisions
 

Week 8: Execution of App
 

Deliverables:

·       Final Design Mock Ups of App

·       Measures of Success Document


PAYMENT

Regarding payment, I charge on a daily rate of $200 per day. I also require a 30% deposit (exact amount to be based on estimated amount of work days the project will require) that must be cleared before the beginning of the project can begin. The remainder of the payment would be due 30 days upon full delivery of the final project. A contract that details the legalities of the agreement would be signed by both parties and a copy of the contract would, of course, be given to you.
 

A BIT ABOUT ME
I’m passionate about creating not only useful and enjoyable user experiences but also memorable ones. I believe that in adapting the technology to the users, rather than have the user adapt to the technology.

My experience includes the re-design of a real estate website, which then in turn saw an increase in web traffic and became the number one source of information for real estate in that area. I attribute the success to this website from investing time into finding out who the typical user of that site was and tailoring the website experience to them. In addition to that, we’re also always minding the feedback we get about the site to figure out how we can make what we think is already a pretty awesome user experience even better.

Like Taskly, the real estate website is also developing an app version of their website to make it even easier for people to access the information. I’m working currently finishing up work with them and if you’d like to contact them about their experience working with me, let me know and I’ll make sure to put you in contact.

Lastly, you’ve asked about wanting help with your marketing landing page and sign up/pricing page. I’ve included coming up with a pricing guide once we’ve assessed what the competition offers and how we can match or better that. As for the marketing landing page, I’d like to discuss this more with you so I can give you exactly what you’re looking for, as well as a realistic timeline of when I can complete that. I can say, however, that it’s something we would complete after we’ve developed the app. How does that sound?
 

Thanks again, James, for your email. I hope you find what I’ve proposed a good match with Taskly and I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully working with you. I really think we can work together and create exactly what the Taskly user wants.

Regards,
Tara