Context
This is a personal project I created for the Habitify app. Habitify is a personalized habit tracker app designed for iOS, Android, and the Web. I’ve been using Habitify to track my habits. Recently, in order to stay more accountable, I've been looking to share my habit building journey with friends. Coincidentally, Habitify has recently been attempting to help their users do the same thing.
Habitify launched a new feature called challenges. However, despite many sign-ups, few actively participated. This made me wonder, how could I improve Habitify’s social functionality to better help users take advantage of social accountability. I worked on this project from discovery, ideation, to design.
Team and Role
Solo Product Designer
UX Methods
User Interviews • Competitive Analysis • Secondary Research • Affinity Mapping • User Flows • Sketching • Wireframing • Prototyping • Usability Testing
Project Type
Personal Project
Year
2023
Duration
7 Weeks
Goal
The goal was to improve social engagement. This would help users stay more consistent with their habits. It would also help the business steal market share while improving user retention.
Problem
I found that Habitify was focusing on the wrong motivation. Users did not want to compete, they wanted to support each other. This meant that the features Habitify optimized did not match what accountability buddies needed. It made it difficult to see each other's habits, thereby making it difficult to support each other.
Solution
The solution revolved around optimizing for support rather than competition. In order to support a friend, users had to first be able to see what that friend was doing. I reduced the friction it took for users to view their friends' habits. Now they were able to view all of their friends' habits within the app.
*I am not affiliated with Habitify. All logos and trademarks belong to Habitify. This case study was a hypothetical design exploration.*
Habitify launched a new feature called Challenges. Challenges let users compete (publicly or privately) in building a single habit. The person who was the most consistent won. But despite many sign-ups for public challenges, few actively participated. This made me wonder why there was a drop off in participation, and how I could better improve Habitify’s social engagement.
Business Perspective
For the business, It would steal market share due to Habitify being a bigger brand compared to its competitors in the habit tracking space. Also, it would increase retention because users are sticking to their habits.
User Perspective
Reddit forums and Facebook groups show that users want accountability buddies. Studies show that social accountability improves habit formation. So by giving users tools that make it easier to participate in social habit tracking, it would increase the chances of them staying consistent with their habits. Which is their main goal.
They lacked connection with fellow participants.
Habit selection and habit frequency were too strict.
People preferred to participate with friends, but didn’t have any that would participate.
Research Goals:
Identify what aspects of social accountability make people more likely to achieve their goals.
Evaluate our competitors and identify what social accountability features are expected and can be improved upon.
Describe the reasons why users were not sticking to challenges.
Blind Spots
Quantitative data on individuals participating in private challenges and linking to their habits. Based on the amount of users not participating challenges, I made the assumption that users were not using private challenges and sharing habits via links.
Data on international users.
Until then, I only knew my opinions of the app. I conducted secondary research to understand other people's perspective. I looked at many different reviews, social media post, and forums to achieve this.
What I learned:
People generally liked the app.
People didn't necessarily like challenges, rather, it was the ability to share their habit building journey with others that they liked.
A challenge I faced was I didn't have access to current users. Since my goal for this method was to identify the aspects of social accountability that contributed to goal achievement, I thought interviewing people who had an accountability partner would still provide valuable insight.
What I learned:
The ability to watch others while knowing someone might also be watching you is a reason why social accountability works.
Social accountability only works when it involves someone that they know and trust.
People look to social accountability partners to feel supported, safe, and inspired. They aren't looking to compete.
Flexibility in habit building is important.
I conducted a competitive analysis on a various habit tracking apps to identify features users expected when participating in social habit tracking.
What I learned:
All habit tracking apps with a social component, had a level of privacy control for each individual habit.
Many habit trackers had limited habit tracking functionality, subpar UX, and a smaller team when compared to Habitify.
I focused on pre-existing personal relationships (existing accountability buddies, friends, mastermind groups). The decision stemmed from user interviews. It confirmed my assumption that a deeper connection is crucial for social accountability to work.
Many existing users likely didn't align with the accountability buddy user type. I was fine with that since part of the goal was to steal market share. I believed Habitify could achieve this considering its company size, current market share, habit tracking functionality, and competitors' weaknesses.
I found that Habitify was focusing on the wrong motivation. Based on user interviews, accountability buddies did not want to compete, they wanted to support each other.
By giving users the ability to view each other’s habits, it does the following:
It reduces the friction enough to steal market share.
It creates the foundation for future features. Users can’t hold each other accountable if they can’t easily see what the other is doing.
It motivates users. User interviews show that watching others while knowing someone might also be watching you increases the likelihood of completing a habit.
My original sketches of the solution I landed on.
MVP Functionality:
View friends' habits
Edit habit privacy
Manage a friend list
Find a friend
Add a friend
Remove a friend
Accept, deny, and cancel a friend request
Since I was out of the exploratory phase and the user tasks were “lightweight”, I thought that this would be the right UX method to use. I wasn't focused on optimization. I was more concerned with whether users could complete the task with relative ease.
What I learned:
The completion rate was high (91.5%).
The completion rate for changing habit privacy settings was high (95.5%), but so was the misclick rate (44.6%) and indirect completion rate (40.9%).
Analysis:
Overall, the design was usable.
While users were able to change their habit privacy settings, there was a bit of friction.
Original Design
Originally, users were only able to view their friend’s habits via the challenge feature, or via link and browser. This made it difficult for accountability buddies to support each other because it was difficult to view each other's habits.
Final Design
The solution revolved around optimizing for support rather than competition. The foundation of support is visibility. I reduced the friction it took for users to view their friend's habits. Now they were able to view more than one of their friend's habits within the app.
Adding a high level number for each friend on the friend’s list page
Adding messaging functionality
This adds an extra level of interaction and community that user interview participants mentioned were so valuable in their self improvement journey. This would provide users the ability to encourage, celebrate, and view each other’s habits all in one place.
Giving users the ability to remind their friends about their habits
During user interviews, participants noted that one reason they don’t complete their habits is that they forget. Having some sort of way for friends to kindly remind each other of a habit could be helpful.
