Habits
Stripping Away the Noise of Habit Formation
At a Glance
Role
Solo Product Designer & Researcher
Timeline
12-Week Academic Term, 2024
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Google Docs, Google Forms, Notion
Project Overview
Most habit apps guilt users into consistency with punishing streaks and relentless notifications, and it backfires, especially for burnt-out professionals. I researched why, then designed Habits around one principle instead: encouragement over expectation, replacing punishment with calm, non-judgemental progress cues grounded in the science of habit formation, and resulting in a structured UI kit with interactive light and dark mode prototypes.
Design Goal
Build an ethical habit ecosystem that drives long-term consistency through digital minimalism.
Process Goal
Master end-to-end UX design methodologies and advanced Figma component architecture.
Research & Discovery
Problem Statement
A key challenge for professionals with demanding lifestyles is building consistent, healthy habits. While many want to improve their routines, they are constantly derailed by a lack of time, fluctuating motivation caused by apps that rely on excessive notifications.
Research
While my survey successfully identified core friction points like lack of time and notification fatigue, it lacked the correct demographic spread. To guarantee robust design decisions, I triangulated this primary data with extensive clinical literature and competitor case studies.
What are the biggest challenges you face in maintaining these wellness habits?
What do users actually want from a wellness app?
Key Findings
The 66-Day Baseline
According to the NHS and European Journal of Social Psychology it takes an average of 66 days to form an automatic habit.
The Design Mandate: The app must organically sustain motivation for over two months.
Notification Fatigue
Survey respondents explicitly cited lack of time and intrusive notifications as major barriers to routine building. Supported by competitor case studies, I confirmed that demanding, punitive tracking creates friction and drives app abandonment
ideation
Sketching Ideas
Showcasing a polished UI is only half the story. The final minimalism of the Habits app was not the first idea, it was the result of systematically testing, failing, and stripping away unnecessary complexity.
Finding the UX Sweet Spot
Initial prototypes ranged from fully customisable screens that demanded too much setup time, to a text-heavy "to-do list" format that proved unengaging. The final design locks in the visual layout to eliminate personalisation time while maintaining an engaging UI.
from findings into interface
Design Guidelines
To ensure the interface remained a supportive tool rather than a source of digital fatigue, I defined a design system anchored in cognitive calm and pure functionality.
This palette leverages colour psychology to promote calmness and trust, using a neutral foundation to reduce visual fatigue and specific green and blue accents to highlight achievements
Inter was selected because its clean, highly readable form ensures the text remains purely functional and never competes with the app's primary iconography
Key Features
The Solutions
The final high-fidelity interface focuses on three core touchpoints designed to directly solve the problems discovered in the research.
Empathetic Gamification
The Solution
Replacing punitive "streak loss" mechanics with a positive reward system that celebrates weekly consistency and personal bests
The Rationale
Punishing a missed day creates counterproductive guilt, whereas positive reinforcement sustains the motivation needed to cross the 66-day habit formation threshold
Business Impact
Protects user mental well-being while fostering a sustainable, high-retention relationship that actively prevents app abandonment
Visual Completion Loops
The Solution
Circular completion rings instead of standard linear progress bars
The Rationale
Behavioural science shows that visual closure triggers a highly satisfying psychological feedback loop, tapping into an innate human desire for completion
Business Impact
Natively boosts daily engagement and conversion, completely eliminating the need for aggressive push notifications
"Story-Style" Analytics
The Solution
Replacing infinite-scroll dashboards with a quick, "story-style" progress overview accessed via a single long-press
The Rationale
Mimicking familiar, fast-paced content consumption gives users a quick motivational dopamine hit while actively minimising their screen time
Business Impact
Delivers high-value insights instantly, keeping users motivated without demanding excessive attention
Measuring Success
Because this is a conceptual project designed to test an ethical engagement hypothesis, success would be measured in a live environment using the following key performance indicators:
Usability & Friction Metrics
Measuring the average time taken for a user to open the app, mark a habit as complete, and exit.
Long-Term Retention Rate
Tracking the percentage of users who remain actively engaged past the critical 66-day "Habit Formed" milestone.
reflection
Psychology & Minimalism
This project deepened my understanding of the psychology behind habit formation and user motivation. By defining a strictly minimalist aesthetic, I was able to deliver a distraction-free solution that aims to keep users engaged without overwhelming them.
Practical Execution
I became passionate about experience design reading Don Norman and Cliff Kuang, fascinated by how much impact the right solution can have. Habits was my first end-to-end product design project, and I chose to solve a problem I was living myself: building and maintaining habits. What I didn't expect was how much the research would push back on my assumptions, my own recruitment fell short of my target demographic, which forced me to lean on competitor analysis and clinical literature instead, and ultimately shaped a more evidence-grounded design than a handful of easy interviews would have.