Solution

The result is an easy-to-use app that responds to the user's needs and makes use of scientific knowledge. Habit creation is made as easy as possible and is supported by a catalogue of ready-made habits the user can adopt and follow. The ability to create routines supports habit development. It was also important to me to include a mood tracker, so that the user can see how much the habits they have created are having a positive impact on their life.

Another important point in the development was to integrate a certain amount of gamification. This is supported by a storytelling element that unlocks more and more over time and rewards the user for sticking with it.

In addition to researching scientific studies, the following two books helped me gain a deeper understanding of how to create new habits. James Clear has published a very readable work that puts the scientific findings of habit formation into a simple framework. I found the topics of "Habit Stacking" and "Goals vs. System" particularly interesting for my project. These two points played a very important role in my design process. I will discuss this in-depth later.

It was very important to me to get as much information as possible. That is why I went through the effort of supplementing the qualitative surveys (6 participants) with a quantitative survey (21 participants). The questions of the two surveys were not the same but were adapted to the framework of the surveys.

The insights were very exciting. A large majority of users want to learn new habits, and many want to break bad habits. The majority had experience with habit tracking apps, but only a few were successful. It was particularly exciting to see that a large majority play smartphone or computer games on a regular basis. Gamification should definitely be part of the app.

In terms of behavior, I could divide the participants into four basic groups:

• Upholders — Disciplined and respond to both internal and external expectations (6)
• Obligers — Can't keep commitments to themselves but respond to the expectations of others (10)
• Rebels — Hate being told what to do - so it must be something they want to do (4)
• Questioners — Ask a lot of questions and can keep a habit if they understand the logic and reasoning (1)

Competitive Audit

In this project, the competitive audit was very exciting, as it revealed the remarkable diversity in both the ideas and implementation across different products. Some apps were all about gamification (Habitica), others grew plants to progress (Avocation) and others took a very technical approach (Loop Habit Tracker) to meet the needs of the users. The user experience was excellent for almost all apps. I was also very happy that my vague idea did not appear among the competition and that I could fill a gap in the market.

Often, not much time is spent on the gamification of apps which results in half-hearted solutions. I didn't want to go down that path with this app. It is very important to make it clear to the stakeholders what the product could look like in the end. But, especially at this stage of development, you don't want to unnecessarily waste resources on having pictures made by hand for the prototype. So, there were two remaining options: buy finished images or use AI to generate the images. I quickly realized that the first option would not lead to the desired result.

The first part was to come up with story ideas that would engage and motivate the widest possible audience. Then I had a story written using ChatGPT that could be easily broken into small parts. This was done very quickly.

To generate the images, I used a version of the open source software called Stable Diffusion running locally on my computer. Stable Diffusion gives you much more freedom and possibilities to generate images than DALL-E or Midjourney and delivers equally good or sometimes even better results.

The goal was to create images with a very similar style and look. However, it was important to find a good compromise between quality and price (time). The end results were impressive yet affordable.

These are images for a prototype and a case study, not for the finished product.