The Problem

Working professionals and students are not able to achieve their goals

I look around and see people working, doing activities for a specific goal. I saw many of them were not able to achieve, or were getting distracted from what they wanted in the first place.

The Solution

Introducing Discipline through Gamification and Accountability

White Paper Research

It's easy to achieve goals when people are disciplined

When people are disciplined and have formed good habits, their ability to get things done doesn’t depend on how they feel. In a way, discipline works like auto-pilot. People don’t need to wait for the right feeling or motivation to start.

Primary Research

My interviewees were more likely to succeed when there was accountability for their goals

I conducted a survey and 7 interviews, 3 of them were students while 4 were working professionals. I’ve asked them questions below to understand if they were able to achieve their goals or not, and if they were then how were they able to do it.

Research Questions:

1. How often are you able to complete your day-to-day tasks?

2. How do you plan your day?

3. How often are you able to achieve your goals?

4. What habits are you proud of?

5. What habits do you want to get rid of?

6. Do you have trouble focusing while working or studying?

The Personas

Design

A smartphone app can be a solution

Initially, I considered two options: a diary or a smartphone app. Because the bulk of my users were familiar with using smartphones, it made sense to create an app because an app allows for much more freedom for solutions  to manage tasks and objectives, as well as to schedule reminders and much more.

Competitive Analysis + The Gap

Analyzed three applications to see what the competition was offering 

The first is Apple Reminders, which was used by a couple of my users. It's simply a planning app.

Habitify and Habitica are the other two applications I ran a competitive study on. Habitify allows you to log your habits, while Habitica allows you to gamify your chores and goals by upgrading virtual characters.

One thing I observed was that none of the rivals' apps included an accountability function. Habitica had gamification to make tasks more fun but no accountability aspect. 

I kept the benefits and drawbacks of these apps in mind as I moved forward. I attempted to incorporate the pros of these applications into my solution while also addressing the drawbacks.

Paper Prototype

User interface ideation

CONCLUSION + LESSONS LEARNED

What I’d do differently next time.

This was my first UX project while doing masters in UX design! 🎉. More than the actual output, I’m immensely grateful to have been through an entire UX process in depth. On that note, a few things I’ve learned:

1. Create a design system. Because my first iteration of screens was not created using a design system, my design had unintentional inconsistencies and took a long time to create. Having a design system makes designing easier and adds uniformity to the product. Not to mention - I'll remember to follow accessibility requirements the next time!

2. Be insight- not process-driven. Despite weeks of research + development, my first version of this case study was full of unnecessary text at this stage instead of tying everything into the bigger question- “so how does this fit into the bigger picture”? Hence, I cut down the copy by more than 60% and focused on the major points in my project. Hence, going forward I believe focusing more on the insights will improve my storytelling abilities to others.

3. You didn’t fail- you just found 100 ways that didn’t work. From noticing mistakes in my UI to uncovering more foundational UX problems in my app, I’m thankful to have constantly asked for feedback from my peers and my mentor. In the end, I pushed to have the app as best I could, and did not let my own thinking stop me from questioning if my own decisions were truly best for the user.

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