Hypothesis

Creating new habits is hard. It takes time and discipline to go against your ingrained tendencies. A big challenge in developing habits is maintaining motivation once the initial excitement has worn off. How can we make creating new habits fun? That’s what I set out to find with Loop.

What Drives You?

I interviewed a number of people to figure out how they approached new habits, how they rewarded themselves, and what motivated them. They overwhelmingly spoke about the joy of checking off an item and the sense of accomplishment that brought. I incorporated a gamification element to enhance that feeling.

Combatting Guilt

Mapping out user interview comments revealed people would feel guilty for not completing a habit, which could lead to more missed days or even abandoning the habit altogether.

I came up with multiple features to help minimize this guilt. Skip, is for days where you just can’t complete the habit for whatever reason life threw at you that day. Skip removes the habit from your daily list, embodying “out of sight, out of mind” and letting you move on with other habits. Stack, lets you redeem yourself the following day by completing the habit twice. Finally, streaks can create anxiety in some people, especially as the streak gets longer. Streaks can be turned off in settings for those who wish.

Testing Early Concepts

Testing showed the Stack feature needed a little attention during onboarding for people to learn the concept. People felt the full week of dates being displayed was unnecessary and wanted to swap between previous, current, and next days easier. Habits and goals were difficult to differentiate, so I integrated the two together.

Final Design