Design of a Task-Management APP to Avoid Procrastination

Abstract

Procrastination (the delay of execution of important tasks and decision-making) is a habit due to multiple reasons: lack of interest and motivation, distraction, lack of management skills among others. Procrastination is known to be the cause of dire consequences: anguish, guilty, social and work failures, among others. Currently, the use of Information and Communication Technologies may be a source of procrastination due to the attention-grabbing and distracting activities. On the other hand, the very same technology is an ally in habit formation - a feature that can be used to inform the design of App’s that help the user to manage their activities to avoid procrastination. Existing applications present several inadequacies (i.e. lack of good information design, lack of usability among others). Such inadequacies compromise the use of the application, and thus are detrimental to its efficiency. This article addresses such issues in order to inform the design of a task-management app to track the execution of task and help avoid procrastination.