HabitPals
UXUI Case Study
Overview
The objective of this project is to design a habit-tracking mobile app that is intuitive and supportive of the users' journeys. HabitPals blends a virtual pet experience with habit tracking. HabitPals' goal is to motivate people to ensure the creation and termination of habits. This research was done as part of a UX course at UT Austin.
The Challenge
Making or breaking a habit has never been easy. We wanted to gamify this process to encourage users to track their progress with an inviting and nonjudgemental digital experience.
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Key Features
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Low stakes, inviting visual identity
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Create and customize a virtual pet
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Create multiple goals and track daily progress
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Track long term progress
My Role
This was researched and developed as a project from a class on Mobile App UX Design with a team. I contributed with aiding research, competitive analysis, user flows and personas, wireframes, and visual design. After the conclusion of this course, I further explored HabitPal's design and prototype.​
Tool Kit
Research
The Process
Competitive Analysis
I looked at popular habit-tracking mobile apps and found these features to be a common throughline:
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The ability to track the progress of multiple habits
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Long term data
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Custom reminders/notifications
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Journaling/note mechanic
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​I also looked into what users found frustrating about these apps. Based on reviews, common pain points were:
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Clunky or lagging user experience
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Unclear instructions
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Features locked behind premium subscriptions
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User Interviews
To understand more about how people already go about tracking their habits, we sent out a survey asking people questions about their methods. We received 59 responses.
How do you go about forming new habits?
45.8% responded with "By setting goals or rewards."
37.3% responded with " By telling others / doing it with friends."
Have you ever successfully broken a habit? If so, how?
"I used to stop biting my nails by getting friends to remind me anytime I do it so that I could stop."
— user write-in response.
"Yes! I used to eat super bad but I began by writing everything down and counting the calories. This way I understood what I was putting into my body."
— user write-in response
On average, people who took our survey found that breaking a habit was more difficult than creating one.
User Persona
Using our research and survey data, I created a user persona to guide HabitPal's design.
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Based on our research, we created user stories and a user flow chart to start building the app's structure.
User Flow Diagram
User Stories
As a new user, I want to create an account in order to back up my habit data.
As a user, I want to customize my HabitPal, to make my HabitPal more unique and personal to me.
As a user, I want to easily view and update my progress throughout the day.
Wireframes
We created wireframes using our user stories as guides. First on paper and then I used Figma to visualize the structure of our app.
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Wireframe sketches, paper
Digital Wireframe
Higher - Fidelity Wireframe
Visual Design
What I learned...
I initially used this project to explore UX as a potential career path and fell in love with it. I wish to continue on in this field.
I also used this project to teach myself Figma and enjoyed learning a fraction of what the software has to offer.
But one of my biggest take aways was the importance of a good wireframe. I found myself revisiting HabitPal's detalis and structure over and over as I created the visual design.
