Even those who have experience on goal settings and are aware of some of their accomplishments in the past, they are still hesitant to admit they are goal oriented.

The reason could be, they have a very high expectation about goal settings and the success it would bring. Even those who have a personal couch, feel that they lack the motivation and are not as disciplined on achieving their goals as they could be.

Goals Priority

The 3 most important categories of goal for our users and their priorities are as ordered below.

Family > Personal > Career

For an unmarried individual the order slightly changes which is as below.

Career > Personal > Family

When we ask for their recent achievements, most of them can only recall their achievements on family or personal goals, Though they spend most of their time on career goals. Either they treat their career accomplishment as a base for family and personal achievements or want to underplay because career achievement would be often received as a self-boasting.

Goal as a path to success

Those who have previous experience on goal settings, treat it as a way to reach an unknown place. They believe the time and effort they spend working on a goal would not go to waste, even if they don’t achieve it. They would take it as learning and expand their realisation. They would feel upset only if they can’t do any progress on their goal

Whereas those who don’t have prior experience would consider failure of goal is disheartening. Failing a goal would upset them, so they are hesitant to make one.

Need help on writing a goal:

Regardless of their previous experience, they often confuse goals with dreams and habit building. For example, in our testing we found people set the following things as their goals.

Reading a fiction book

Stop drinking etc.

If they are not writing a clear goal and unsure about what they really want?” they would not be able to further analyze and fail miserably on the execution too.

Writing a clear goal is important to analyze and find a realistic workable plan. The app must be built with a technology to handheld them at every step, without triggering their cognitive load.

Overthinking about the obstacles:

They often underestimate their potential. When we ask why they wanted to achieve a goal? and what obstacles would they face today? they often list more obstacles than the reason to achieve. It might be due some of their past experience or false knowledge. But it is evident our user would face this issue on goal setting, at least while they begin.

Tools they use today

There is not a single tool which our user feels serves the purpose. They are completely old school, when it comes to writing and tracking the goal. for example here are some of the methods they follow

Writing their goal on an excel sheet and reviewing it from time to time. It was a template shared by their mentor and he taught him how to use it.

Sending future emails, so that they would trigger their brain to dream about the future and start working on it subconsciously.

Using a calendar as a journal where they would note down their key moments of the day and set reminders for the future.

None of them efficiently help them to work on their goal. They are using it because they get used to it and don’t find a better solution to it.

Wanted to take things slowly

For example if they wanted to save 20k every month. They wanted to start with 5k at first and eventually increase it. Users wanted to slowly throttle it based on their capability. It is not always “final number” / “number of days”.

They fear to tie a goal to a specific time, because of a lot of uncertainty and change in life they go through every day. Having a goal tied to a specific time and our situation not letting them to act on it as another turn off. Hence they wanted to have a loose goal and work on it without any time pressure.

Wanted to be rewarded

The need to see the value of working on their goal. They might see the vision of how it would improvise their life and what change it has brought in after they work on it. It should be yet another task tool with reminders and notification.

People wanted to see reward for what they have done. When they have done something, they should be appreciated and guide them further rather than simply checking and showing the remaining items to do. This would be a big turn-off again.

They would easily lose the motivation and give up if they are not rewarded or don’t see the benefit constantly.

Visualization helps them

If there is one technique which our user believes in goal setting then it is visualization of dream. When we ask why they failed to accomplish a certain goal, their answer was simply they have not dreamed about it enough.

We heard from multiple users that they would like to visualize their goals. But before they do it, they want to ensure that the goal is so important to them. They wanted to maintain the serenity of the technique because if misused, it would be one another mind manipulation technique.

Life couches are expensive

Our user feels life coaches are expensive and they are unsure if they can bring change. They feel everyone is different and facing unique situations in life.

They are confident of taking help from a career coach if they are stuck in their career. But a life couch would be tricky. Sharing personal information would also lead to judgment; they don’t feel it necessary to take such steps at least now.

Won’t share the goals even with their closed ones:

They wanted to share their goals only those who would encourage them and helps them to achieve the goal. But often the gets the opposite even from the friends and family. They become judgmental about them and often demotivates them. Fearing they stop sharing with others and badly looking for someone they can trust and be supportive to them.

Working with a partner:

Everybody agree a partner would be helpful to achieve a goal, by sharing their motivations and overcome the obstacles with both their learnings. But they same time they are cautious about choosing a partner, because a wrong partner can derail them too.

Shared goals like “Reducing the monthly expense or Help the kid to be good at sports” would need the partner help and involvements. For such goals partner need to be aware and part of our plan and activity.

Users Excitement

Our users are excited when

They completed some task and they know that they are making progress and can achieve the goal in a certain time.

They know they are aware of their goals and taking control of their life.

When they taste some success and the greater goals comes to their mind

When they get the sense they find the centre of the life and feel lot more composed and stress free

When they learn about them self and realising their true potential

Design Expectation:

They wanted the app to look simple but yet motivating, and exciting to use. They don’t wanted to see any clutter that would overwhelm them and loss the focus. Working on a goal is a complex task, they expect the tool to be simple and usable mindlessly.

They expect it to be flexible and the gives the control to customise. Following a structure approach and right flow would be big turn off for them.

Content relationship:

The relationship between the goal, task and habit are not clear. They need to understand the process well and how each one of them are generated and tracked. At the first glance the relationship between those are not clear to them. Where to create, where to check was bit of a mess for them.

Detailed but not overwhelming:

At the dashboard they expect to see the summery of the goals they are working. Status if each task, and their performance like how are they doing this month, What they have achieved this year etc. But at the same time they don’t wanted it to over clutter so they don’t get the feeling “they have a lot of do”.

They wanted to see goals as their primary content then the task. They expect the application to be goal driven rather then task. In general they have a very bad impression about task tracking, because it is not addictive they would easily fail.

Keep it as they expect:

They don’t find the use of separate page of attachment. Journal is a nice thing to have it in digital format because it is secure then writing a planner. But at the same time it not only for writing their achievement. They would use it to track their key moments in their life and important dates.

Security is at most important:

We expect our users to talk out their mind. A perfect goal analysis starts with listening to one's mind without any judgment. They would trust our application only if they feel the data entered here are safe and won’t be misused at any time.

That is one of the reason our users use excel, email etc as their tool because they trust those application because

They are time tested. Those tools will be available even after 20 years from today.

The system would not know that we keep our personal data there. So they feel the data can’t be misused.

And those are tools available. On the web, mobile etc.

Jazz up the insight:

Having a report as a separate page and showing it as a table makes the application look out of trend. Our users expect the key insights from our goals and produce the visual summery so they would know their overall progress and current performance

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.