COHABIT
Trying to build a new habit? You're not alone!
The Problem
You start a New Year's resolution and fail? 40% of Americans try to change bad habits every year, and 4/5 eventually fail.
More generally, 61% of Americans are still trying to break unhealthy routines created by the pandemic. From issues ranging from screen time to sleep time to food consumption, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to create healthy habits.
Habit formation can be tough for many people, and is something almost everyone tries to do. Students, in particular, have a unique set of circumstances--balancing work, life, school, relationships, and hobbies can make habit formation even more difficult.
So...how might we help students build habits successfully?
User Needs/Insights
Our potential users are all students in college, with varying goals and needs relating to habit formation.
Through user research (interviews and surveys) we learned key details about habit formation and what factors contribute to successfully building a habit. We found that motivation and persistence are both extremely important, and that there are several different ways to be motivated or persistent.
Alongside learning about habit formation, we found common trends that prevent people from building habits, as seen below:
Ideation
With insights from user research, specifically those relating to issues people have when starting to create a new habit, the solution to the problem was to ensure an opposite user journey, as per the diagram.
I then came up with several solutions that could potentially aid a user in building a habit through brainwriting:
Prototyping Process
After the ideation step, I decided to go through with the gamified habit tracker, which would both motivate the user through rewards along with measuring consistency.
In my mid-fi prototype, I refined this idea further--there is a pet that goes with you on your journey. You can earn points by completing certain goals relating to your journey, which can be used to purchase/unlock items for the pet. The pet also adds a cuteness factor and can appeal to student-aged demographics too, also adding a companion for the journey to make the user feel less alone.
Usability Testing:
Usability testing script:
How do you normally track habits?
What are your current feelings on forming and tracking habits?
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Show me how you would add a new habit.
How might you customize your pet?
Describe the ways you can view your progress on your habit-tracking journey.
How might you navigate to the goals page?
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Did you feel more organized about habit tracking after exploring the app?
What features did you wish were included?
Do you feel like the “game” aspects like the pet avatar and the store would help you be engaged?
How do you normally track habits?
What are your current feelings on forming and tracking habits?
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Show me how you would add a new habit.
How might you customize your pet?
Describe the ways you can view your progress on your habit-tracking journey.
How might you navigate to the goals page?
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Did you feel more organized about habit tracking after exploring the app?
What features did you wish were included?
Do you feel like the “game” aspects like the pet avatar and the store would help you be engaged?
Insights/Quotes from Usability Testing:
“It definitely could be more apparent that you can add more goals”
“The level numbers don’t add much in terms of quantifying goals if we keep adding more--there’s no end and it doesn’t mean much to the user.”
“Landing page could have more content/have more going on than just buttons to other pages--could have more of a purpose”
“It definitely could be more apparent that you can add more goals”
“The level numbers don’t add much in terms of quantifying goals if we keep adding more--there’s no end and it doesn’t mean much to the user.”
“Landing page could have more content/have more going on than just buttons to other pages--could have more of a purpose”
From feedback, I changed my mid-fi prototype to create a better design for the hi-fi prototype. I found that my starting page was redundant and uninteresting--lacking meaningful contribution to the app. Instead, I started the app on the visualized journey page. This way, it adds value to the user and keeps them a little more engaged with stuff actually going on on the screen. Next, I decided to color-code the self-care journey and add icons to the corresponding goals, to vamp up the mid-fi prototype. For the pet store, I made it more clear what the system was (certain number of points before you unlock mystery prizes for your pet) since that wasn’t as clear before. Finally, I added a goals page, where the user can view their goals and edit them as they want to. I also added better navigation on all of the pages.
Hi-Fi Prototype
The End!
