Zenith
About The Challenge
Presented by Wilfrid Laurier University’s UX Design Program, Design for Change is a Canada-wide challenge where my team placed third out of over 400 participants.
The solution
Zenith turns your to-dos into doable plans with visual timelines, AI task breakdown, and tools that cut through the chaos.
My role
Project Manager
Team
UX Lead
UX Researcher
UI Lead
Duration
10 weeks
Research
20% of the world's population is estimated to be neurodivergent
To address this, I prioritized allocating the majority of our project timeline to comprehensive UX research, setting a foundation for informed and inclusive outcomes.
1
Initial Discovery
Desk Research
Discussions with Mentors
2
Suppositions Creation
With our growing knowledge, we began crafting several suppositions about the most critical problems we should address. At this stage, we allowed ourselves to generate various ideas without immediately evaluating their validity.
3
Validation
Stakeholder Interviews
Based on our suppositions, I helped the team create interview questions to pinpoint the problems our users cared about most. This gave our project a clear, user-focused direction.
This comprehensive approach enabled us to prioritize the pain points identified in the second phase and helped us select the core focus for our solution.
THE PROBLEM
What do ADHD students say?
We have interviewed 5 young adults with ADHD who are attending or have attended post-secondary education and these were our key findings:
Key pain points
Difficulty maintaining focus on taks
Frequent distractions and hard-to-navigate transitions make it tough for individuals with ADHD to stay engaged, leading to lost momentum and unfinished work.
Challenges balancing academic and personal life
Overlapping priorities and unclear routines make it difficult to manage school, work, and self-care, often leaving them feeling overwhelmed, unsupported and unable to “do it all.”
Struggles with inflexible learning structures
They expect perfect focus, seamless task initiation and rigid routines, leaving many ADHD’ers behind.
THE CHALLENGE
Neurodivergent individuals struggle with executive functioning, making daily task management consistently difficult.
Design
Creating an inclusive and accessible environment
We conducted competitor UI analysis to evaluate existing task management apps and created a UI inspiration board to refine user interactions and visual style.
We used aurora borealis-inspired neutral hues to reduce distractions, ease navigation for neurodivergent users and lower cognitive load. A round-icon design system with soft UI elements and Lexend typeface improves readability, especially for ADHD users.
the Solution
Introducing Zenith
Onboarding
Zenith adapts to you from the start. Onboarding captures what matters most: priorities, learning needs, and accessibility.
Visual Planning
Organization works best when it’s visual. Customize views, color-code tasks and stay organized across devices.
Plan with AI
Turn thoughts into action. Zenith's AI builds step-by-step plans and estimates time for you.
Live activities
Staying on track is easier with less friction. See upcoming tasks and timers at a glance, without opening the app.
Focus Mode
Transitions are where focus is most often lost. Stay anchored in your tasks, handle transitions smoothly, and keep momentum without the stress.
Conclusion
What did I learn?
Go beyond expectations
It is important to empathize with users and understand their feelings and needs even if they don't understand this themselves.
fLEXIBILITY
The key in prioritizing the right problems was flexibility. We used an Impact Value Matrix, replacing "effort" with "value" to reflect stakeholder needs. This approach helped us focus on solutions that matter most to ADHD students and maximize impact.
Challenges
Managing a high intensity project
I faced challenges balancing team coordination, deadlines, and decision-making. The broad challenge statement led me to extend the research phase, which benefited the final solution but compressed UI timelines.
Focus on MVP
It is tempting to design more features and come up with universal solutions. But given the deadlines and amount of user feedback, priority was to speak to the users and iterate.
Next Steps
Extended user testing
Conduct more extensive user testing with a larger group of students, including a broader range or ADHD experiences, academic backgrounds and study habits.
Research Submission
Interested in the full process?
Hey! Thanks for going through my work. This is only the outline of my project, if you are interested in the whole process, check out the complete version on Canva, link below:
