Irene Yu
Introducing WorkZen
In today's dynamic work landscape, a timely nudge can transform an ordinary day. Yet traditional tools often deliver generic advice at the wrong moment. I embarked on a solo project to create WorkZen—an AI-powered system that adapts to your workflow without intrusive data. By leveraging contextual signals like calendar events and usage patterns, WorkZen offers smart, precise guidance exactly when you need it.
Design Evolution
WorkZen began as a simple tool based on manual inputs and basic calendar events. With each iteration, it naturally evolved to include nuanced, context-aware features that address the real challenges of modern work. Its evolution was a gradual, thoughtful layering of enhancements.
The Challenge
Reimagining Personalized Guidance
In just two months, my goal was to harness AI to deliver timely, personalized guidance for early-career professionals. The mission was clear: empower users to manage their schedules, make informed decisions, and drive self-improvement—without relying on intrusive data. I aimed to build a robust foundation that adapts to the dynamic needs of a diverse, evolving workforce.
Key objectives included:
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Delivering fast, intuitive assistance anytime, anywhere.
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Empowering users with personalized scheduling and actionable insights.
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Creating an adaptive platform that fosters continuous self-improvement.
My Role
From October to December 2024, I was solely responsible for the entire design process of WorkZen—from initial concept through to a working prototype. Every aspect, from user research and interaction design to testing and final validation, was driven by my vision and execution.
KICKOFF
Gathering the Clues
At the outset of the WorkZen project, there wasn’t a clear mission or set goals for delivering context-aware guidance. Lacking pre-existing insights into how early-career professionals manage their workday, I dove into research—exploring the challenges they face and uncovering opportunities for AI-driven support.
Early Insights from the Field
I conducted field testing with 8 early-career professionals across various work settings to evaluate existing scheduling and productivity tools. The goal was to identify the key challenges they faced and uncover the workarounds they employed in their daily routines.
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Frequent Interruptions at Inopportune Moments
Early research revealed that users were frustrated by notifications arriving during deep focus or transitional moments. They expected WorkZen to seamlessly integrate with their natural workflow without constant interruptions.
Generic Guidance Misaligned with Personal Rhythms
Participants reported that generic, one-size-fits-all advice failed to address their unique work habits and energy levels. They desired guidance that adapts to individual schedules and personal needs.
Unexpected Schedule Conflicts
Many users experienced scheduling prompts that clashed with pre-existing commitments. This led to abrupt adjustments and frustration, highlighting the need for more context-sensitive timing.
Divergent Behaviors in Task Prioritization
The research uncovered two distinct user behaviors: some meticulously plan every detail, while others prefer spontaneous task management.
Key Findings
Evolving User Expectations
I was initially surprised by the challenges uncovered during the early research for WorkZen. At first glance, the issues seemed like minor irritants—almost like the everyday quirks of a tech-savvy urban crowd. However, it soon became evident that early-career professionals expected their productivity tools to "just work" with minimal effort. As these users increasingly relied on digital guidance to navigate complex workdays, their expectations evolved to demand smarter, more intuitive support.
“Curiosity uncovered an opportunity to perfect personalized guidance for every professional, regardless of their environment.”
If tech-forward, well-equipped individuals were struggling with fragmented notifications and mismatched timing in our most favorable settings, what might the experience be like in less optimized, more challenging contexts? This realization set a clear north star for WorkZen—to deliver seamless, context-aware support that adapts to the evolving needs of all users.
In-Depth Insights
Working Backwards from Perfect
Before diving into designing WorkZen, I needed to define what “perfect guidance” meant and understand the current shortcomings of existing calendar tools. I broke down the ideal experience into dimensions such as timing, relevance, and user comfort, and used my own research to uncover key areas for improvement.
Extra Coordination Required
Many calendar entries need manual tweaking—users often spend extra time confirming or adjusting details, breaking the promise of a seamless experience.
Inconsistent Scheduling Information
There's a frequent mismatch between intended event details and what is actually recorded, causing planning discrepancies.
Vague event specifications
Users often leave crucial details vague, leading to miscommunication and unexpected changes in their schedules.
Overlooked or delayed updates
Updates to events—be it time, location, or details—are often not synchronized promptly, leaving users with outdated information.
Reframing the Problem
Poorly Managed Work-Life Dynamics Amplify Career Anxiety
Traditional productivity tools often intensify the tension between ambition and well-being for early-career professionals. Mismatched guidance—untimely skill-building prompts, rigid fitness schedules, and generic mental health tips—creates a cycle of guilt and burnout. Users expend extra mental effort reconciling conflicting priorities, leading to decision paralysis and diminished self-efficacy. Moreover, recovery debt manifests when weekend "self-care marathons" fail to offset chronic fatigue.
"How might we transform productivity tools from taskmasters into mindful mentors?"
This question inspired me to create WorkZen—an AI-powered guidance system that dynamically adapts to real-world contexts, personalizes its communication style, and supports sustainable growth rhythms.
The Guidance Redesign
Introducing WorkZen
In an age where every minute is in high demand, WorkZen empowers you to reclaim your time by delivering personalized, context-aware guidance that is effortless, insightful, and nurturing. WorkZen makes sensible decisions on your behalf, striking the perfect balance between productivity and well-being—providing you with clear and actionable insights that support your growth.
Harmony at a Glance
Your Harmony Dashboard presents a clear view of your work, study, and wellness balance. The AI-generated Zen Pulse keeps track of your cognitive load, ensuring you never overcommit.
Real-time Adaptation
WorkZen detects high-stress moments and prompts you to take smart recovery actions—like a quick stretch, a guided breathing exercise, or a short social break—helping you recharge effectively.
Your Schedule, Your Control
AI optimizes your day, but you always have the final say. The Task Priority Matrix lets you drag and adjust priorities, so your schedule remains flexible and tailored to your needs.
Meet Your AI Match
No two workdays—or users—are the same. WorkZen’s AI Buddy quiz helps you discover the assistant that matches your mindset. Whether you thrive on structure, seek emotional support, or love a playful nudge, your responses will guide our smart selector to pair you with the right digital companion.
Understand Your Energy
WorkZen tracks your sleep, stress, and activity to help you stay balanced. Adjust your energy level manually or let AI analyze your patterns and update it for you—so you can focus when it matters most.
Smarter Focus Sessions
Pick a task, set a timer, and let AI guide your breaks. Stay on track with real-time tips and energy-aware support.
How we got there
Designing a Seamless Productivity Experience
Three primary questions informed my design strategy:
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How can we help users stay productive without burning out?
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What contexts should be considered when suggesting activities like working out or learning a new skill?
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How can we balance structure with flexibility to adapt to users' changing energy and focus?
Early on, it was important to understand how users manage their daily energy, schedules, and habits. I explored a range of productivity scenarios and translated them into the Adaptive Productivity Framework—helping WorkZen provide smart, timely suggestions like taking a walk, doing a short skill-up session, or just resting, all based on real-time energy data and user preferences.
A More Context-Aware Design
Traditional productivity tools often assume that all users have predictable schedules and uniform energy levels. However, WorkZen was designed to accommodate a diverse range of work styles, cognitive rhythms, and personal learning preferences.
To move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, I adopted a context-driven design strategy, ensuring that WorkZen adapts to who you are, when you work best, and how you prefer to learn.
Understanding Variability in Productivity & Learning
The Energy Spectrums highlight the different temporary or permanent cognitive states that influence how users engage with tasks—some days, users may be highly focused and ready to absorb new information, while on others, they may need lighter cognitive loads and restorative activities.
The Situational Contexts recognize the unpredictable nature of work-life balance. Whether a user is juggling back-to-back meetings, commuting, or recovering from mental fatigue, WorkZen dynamically adjusts to optimize engagement without adding cognitive burden.
"Historically, productivity tools have overlooked the fluid nature of energy levels and work rhythms."
This perspective helped dismantle rigid assumptions about how people plan their days, allowing WorkZen to scale across different lifestyles and adapt to real-world challenges from the outset.
From Static Planning to Dynamic Adaptation
I developed the Adaptive Productivity Framework to redefine how learning and scheduling tools accommodate real-world variability.
Rather than building a rigid system that forces users to fit into predefined structures, WorkZen was designed from the ground up to be fluid, responsive, and context-aware.
This shift reframed the conversation from “How do we make a standard study planner work for everyone?” to “How might we create a system that evolves with each user’s cognitive energy, time constraints, and priorities?”
By focusing on real-time adaptation rather than static scheduling, WorkZen ensures that learning, work, and recovery are seamlessly balanced—no matter how unpredictable the day becomes.
Working Backwards from Effortless Productivity
I reversed the traditional approach to productivity tools—rather than forcing users to conform to rigid schedules, I explored what a truly adaptive system would look like.
Four key design challenges emerged:
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How might we better understand a user’s cognitive energy and focus levels in real time?
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How might we create a learning and task system that integrates seamlessly into existing routines without adding friction?
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How might we remove the need for manual scheduling and let the system intelligently suggest the best time to study or work?
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How might we better adapt to the unpredictable nature of energy fluctuations, interruptions, and shifting priorities?
By working backwards from an ideal, effortless experience, WorkZen was designed to anticipate, adjust, and align with each user’s natural rhythm—making productivity feel intuitive rather than imposed.
From Overwhelming to Intuitive
Better Understanding How and When Users Work & Learn
A major reason why traditional productivity tools fail is their over-reliance on users manually scheduling tasks. This leads to rigid plans that don’t account for real-life fluctuations in energy, focus, or interruptions.
Our research revealed that:
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Most users don’t manually adjust their schedules once they are set.
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Many planned learning sessions are abandoned due to poor timing.
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Users often have predictable cognitive rhythms, but existing tools fail to leverage them.
Based on these insights, I proposed two key feature ideas: Dynamic Scheduling and Energy-Aware Task Prioritization to better align WorkZen with the user’s real-world habits.
Let the System Do the Heavy Lifting
Instead of forcing users to plan their study and work sessions manually, WorkZen proactively:
√ Detects natural focus peaks and dips to recommend optimal work and learning times.
√ Automatically reschedules missed tasks, ensuring users don’t feel overwhelmed.
√ Adapts to changes in real-time, users always get the right task at the right time.
Starting at the End
To truly optimize productivity, there was only one critical factor we needed to understand—how much mental energy the user has at any given moment.
Without much debate, we realized that asking users "How do you feel today?" upon app launch matched their mental model and helped WorkZen dynamically shape their daily schedule.
To remove friction, I designed the Zen Pulse Accelerator—a predictive system that provides 1-tap access to the most relevant work, learning, or recovery activities based on the user’s current state.
Context-Aware Guidance That Adapts to You
If WorkZen was designed to handle scheduling on behalf of the user, its guidance system needed to inspire trust and minimize decision fatigue. Rather than offering generic productivity reminders, WorkZen continuously senses cognitive load, stress levels, and daily rhythms to adjust suggestions dynamically.
One of the riskier design decisions was to remove rigid, time-based task notifications in favor of adaptive nudges. Instead of interrupting users at inconvenient moments, WorkZen waits for the right cognitive window—a brief focus surge, a natural break, or a transition period—to present high-impact recommendations. This shift meant users would never feel micromanaged, yet always had timely, relevant guidance when they needed it most.
A Digital Mentor That Feels Like You
A static AI assistant wasn’t enough—WorkZen needed to mirror the user’s personality to create a supportive and motivating experience. The Persona Mirror System allows users to shape their AI guide based on their learning style, preferred communication tone, and accountability needs.
This required a significant UI shift away from one-size-fits-all responses. Instead of a generic productivity assistant, WorkZen adapts its tone—whether that’s a strict coach, a relaxed mentor, or a gamified companion. The challenge was ensuring that even with different personalities, the system remained trustworthy, clear, and constructive. By allowing users to train their AI’s response style, WorkZen turns productivity into a more personal and engaging experience.
Energy Management Beyond Just Time
Traditional productivity tools focus on scheduling tasks, but WorkZen focuses on managing energy. The Anti-Burnout Architecture ensures users don’t just get more done—they do so sustainably.
Instead of showing only pending tasks, the Harmony Dashboard provides a real-time balance of work, learning, and recovery. The system detects stress patterns, prolonged work sessions, and fatigue signals, nudging users to take action before burnout sets in. One of the more controversial decisions was to prioritize energy over task completion—sometimes, WorkZen actively reschedules or delays tasks if the user’s cognitive load is too high. This ensures users achieve long-term progress without sacrificing well-being.
From Overworked to Sustainable / Rigid to Adaptive
Giving Users Back Their Energy
Understanding the user’s cognitive load and stress patterns allows WorkZen to do the heavy lifting—dynamically optimizing the day’s schedule to prevent burnout. The system needed to be smart enough to optimize in the background, yet transparent enough to intervene when necessary. This balancing act, called adaptive energy management, was one of the most complex challenges in this project.
Foundational to the Anti-Burnout Framework were these concepts:
√ A Cognitive Load Score determines whether WorkZen adjusts the user’s schedule automatically or prompts them to confirm a change. Refining this score remains an ongoing optimization effort.
√ The system must respect user control and agency—allowing users to opt in, opt out, or take full control of their schedule when they prefer.
√ WorkZen must be flexible enough to learn from user preferences over time. Instead of assuming it always knows the right answer, it should adapt based on behavior patterns and feedback.
Early user flow of how Workzen works
Intelligent Energy Balancing
To create a sustainable workflow, WorkZen had to move beyond simple task scheduling to dynamically prioritizing tasks based on cognitive state. This presented several design challenges:
√ Encouraging users to pause and recover when stress levels are high.
√ Creating heuristics to determine the optimal balance between work, learning, and rest.
√ Adapting when we don’t have enough user data to make an informed recommendation.
√ Balancing automation with user choice, ensuring users never feel like they’re losing control.
Adaptation – A Flexible System for Energy Management
I designed this framework based on the concept of a Cognitive Load Score. If WorkZen is confident that the user is in a high-energy state, it schedules deep-focus tasks. If the user is showing stress indicators, WorkZen subtly adjusts the schedule, nudging them towards recovery activities.
Instead of designing for a rigid productivity ideal, I built WorkZen as a fluid system that learns, adapts, and evolves with the user. This ensures long-term productivity without sacrificing well-being.
Usability Testing
Initial round of usability testing on low fidelity wireframes
I conducted moderated usability tests with users to gather feedback and identify friction points in the onboarding, task setup, and AI interaction flows.
Testing goals & questions
How intuitive is the onboarding experience for selecting an AI Buddy?
Do users clearly understand how to start a focus session and set break reminders?
Is the energy tracking feature easy to find and update?
Does the wording in energy status and AI suggestions feel natural and supportive?
Insights to improvements
Simplified onboarding flow to reduce user drop-off during AI Buddy selection.
Clearer labeling for energy adjustment options to avoid confusion between manual and AI-assist modes.
Enhanced focus session guidance, adding small tips during sessions to maintain motivation.
Copy refinement to make system suggestions sound more encouraging and conversational.
From Ambiguous to Precise
Improving Task Matching Accuracy with Context-Aware Guidance
A critical challenge was ensuring that users' work and learning tasks were highly aligned with their current energy levels and available time. Traditional tools rely on users to manually schedule tasks, often overlooking situational factors, which leads to inefficient or poorly timed recommendations.
By studying users' work, learning, and recovery patterns, we discovered that contextual triggers play a crucial role in task matching. These triggers are not strictly tied to time but depend on the user's current state, such as stress levels, task urgency, or cognitive peaks.
This insight inspired the development of the Context-Aware Task Navigator, a system that dynamically adjusts task recommendations using a set of heuristics. For instance, when users are under high stress, the system suggests low cognitive-load tasks (e.g., simple reviews) instead of demanding ones.
Early tests showed that context-aware guidance significantly increased task completion rates and user satisfaction with recommendations. These results validated that reducing ambiguity in task matching made recommendations more precise and actionable.
From Generic to Personalized
Creating True User Resonance with the Persona Reflection System
Personalization is at the core of the user experience in learning and productivity tools. However, traditional systems often adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach, failing to truly resonate with users. What users need is a system that not only offers guidance but also reflects their personal style and preferences.
By analyzing how users interact with tools, we found that communication preferences are highly individualized. For example, some users prefer direct guidance, while others gravitate toward humor or encouragement. Based on this discovery, we developed the Persona Reflection Engine, a framework that generates customizable interaction styles based on user preferences.
The system allows users to select templates such as "Strict Coach," "Humorous Companion," or "Soothing Mentor," tailoring the tone, content, and presentation of suggestions. Over time, it adapts to the user’s interaction habits. For instance, if a user prefers a humorous style, the system gradually incorporates more lighthearted language and even emojis into its responses.
Early tests demonstrated that the Persona Reflection System helped build trust and increased user engagement. While it’s a process of gradual optimization, it clearly shows that providing customizable interaction styles transforms the experience from generic to truly personalized.
The Impact
Positive Results and Opportunities for Growth
The introduction of WorkZen’s redesigned productivity and learning system has shown promising early results in enhancing user experience and achieving better task alignment. While it is too early to measure long-term behavior change, initial qualitative feedback suggests that users feel more in control of their schedules and less overwhelmed by tasks.
Here are some key areas of improvement observed during initial testing: