AppGraded
UX Design final project | Technion External Studies
An app for setting, tracking, and managing habits
My role
UX research
UX design
UI design
Background
Covid-19 has dramatically changed the daily routines we had used to follow in the past.
Keeping social distance, together with working partially from home, changed the way people plan and spend their time.
Goal
Creating an easy to use tool that would help formatting desirable behaviors into new habits.
Problem
Maintaining new habits usually comes with many challenges, including:
Lack of motivation
Forgetting
Procrastinating
Challenge
Helping users to adopt new habits by repeating desirable behavior many times to make it automatic as part of their daily life.
Theoretical research and competitors analysis
After reading articles and research relating to habit formation, I found some useful insights regarding reminders and self-tracking. For example, asking users to choose trigger events and reminding them about the trigger events beforehand can help the users link the trigger event to the new behavior.
Trigger event
Read chapter of a book before going to sleep
Reminder
New behavior
In addition, competitor analysis also helped me understand what solutions are available to users regarding habit formation and what helps users maintain the behavior.
First, incorporate new habits into daily routines can increase the probability of performing them. Second, maintaining a streak can be used as a source of motivation to repeat the behavior.
User research
More insights regarding the challenges and obstacles people face with formatting habits came from interviews and surveys I conducted.
Respondents were asked to explain what motivates them to practice old habits or daily routines, and what stops them from doing so.
Moreover, I was eager to know what habits people tend to adopt, so they can start easily performing these common habits, and decreasing the friction of the habit's set up.
Using apps for sports training and exercising
Start new habit during Covid-19 quarantine
Having daily routines during mornings
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Having daily routines before going to sleep
By grouping and arranging topics from the interviews and survey into topics, I was able to process the data and combine topics related to categories. The Affinity Diagram was also helpful in the persona creation process.
User persona
Collecting the main findings of the user research, I created cohesive narrative to get a better understanding of the user's motivations, needs and frustrations.
Guy | 35 y/o | Financial analyst
Guy has mostly worked from home since covid-19 started, and during the last few months he has gained some weight, and he is not pleased with his fitness level.
After working all day at the apartment, Guy takes a long walk with his dog to relax both his body and mind.
Motivations
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Love to challenge himself
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Dissatisfaction with the current situation
Needs
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Adjusting new habits to daily routines
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Set personal goals
Frustrations
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Busy at work, working late
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Tends to postpone tasks
Solution
Providing a comprehensive solution for setting up new habits or challenge a friend to start new habits together, as well as following a personal goal plan in order to improve the user's overall lifestyle.
User flows
A | Setting up a habit through two ways:
1 Wizard - guides the user through the 4 stages of creating a new habit, starting with choosing the habit name and frequency, and moving on to defining trigger events (a cue) and setting reminders. Tips that provide advice or suggestions to the user are incorporated in the various stages.
2 Choice chips - consist of a variety of habits and events that can be combined to serve multiple users' preferences in a fast and easy process. Additionally, this habit setting option might be favored by users who have a difficult time choosing a habit. A limited list can nudge them for habit selection
1
2
1
Making new habit wizard
2
Choice chips for common habits
B | Getting reminder
The reminder in this app is used to reinforce implementation intentions by sending notifications before their selected trigger event. This could help users form associations between the task (new habit) and its trigger. Hopefully, would encourage them to remember on their own.
C | Habits' performance statistics
Displaying in various ways to a user how often he is practicing his new habit might help him maintain it and keep practicing it.
The upper part of the screen displays how often the user had a streak while receiving badges every few weeks for his determination. Using the pie chart, the user can easily get a general conclusion of how many times he has performed his habit, whereas the lower bar shows his progress over time.
D | Challenge a friend
The application offers various challenges, the main challenge is trying to keep a streak with a friend.
Sharing new habits with a friend could keep the user motivated if he feels like quitting, and it may also increase the likelihood that both of them will continue their new habit.
It also functions as a referral program, which is another advantage of this feature. It greatly expands the audience of those using the product.
Measure success
Using KPIs helps me evaluate my UX solution success, as it allows me to assess how and if customers use my application. Though I only created a prototype, I suggest the following KPIs to measure its performance:
1 | Task success rate
the percentage of correctly completed habit formation by users
2 | Task completion time
the time it takes for a user to create a new habit
3 | Habits per user*
the percentage of users who performed the third habit via the app
4 | Frequency of use
the percentage of users who have completed a weekly habit streak
5 | Participation rate
the percentage of users who sign up using a link sent by the "challenge a friend" feature
* That could be the Aha moment for users to realize the value they get from the product
Learnings
As I aimed to create a product that will provide daily value to users, formatting habits and the challenges they present captured my attention. Having a deep understanding of the problem helped me integrate psychological insights into the solution. Ideally, I would like the KPIs mentioned above to support it with data.
For the first time, I designed a project from research to prototype. While I was nervous at first, I soon learned to trust my gut and the process. Furthermore, keeping to the timeline and asking for constant feedback were essential for the success of the project.
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