Why are people giving up their habits?

In the market, there are dozens of products or services to help users keep their habits. But how many users are giving up on maintaining their habits while using a product. We start to identify how can we keep users’ motivation for habits.

How can we provide a solution for different purposes?

It’s a big challenge how can we provide a solution for different purposes which are “habit” or “task”. When you use a habit tracker, you might have different ways to use it like making a habit or making a task that is only one time to do.

Identify the underlying cause using the 5 Whys

First, I started thinking about “Why is it difficult to keep a habit?” to identify its root cause.

The first question is: “Why is it difficult to keep the habit?“

Over time, initial motivation wanes, making commitment harder. When results don’t come quickly, people lose motivation and feel discouraged, often unaware of their daily small successes. This lack of awareness stems from the difficulty in comparing past achievements with current progress.

As a result, using tools to compare results can help people stay motivated and maintain their habits more effectively.

The key point is…

By using tools to compare results,
people can stay motivated and maintain their habits more effectively.

Understand deeply human behavior through studies

To understand deeply human behavior and the relationship between apps and habits, checked scholarly articles. At this time, I found two interesting articles which are “Don’t Kick the Habit: The Role of Dependency in Habit Formation Apps” and “Beyoung Self-Tracking and Reminders: Designing Smartphone Apps That Support Habi Formation”.

• Don’t Kick the Habit: The Role of Dependency in Habit Formation Apps
  PDF document / Resource
• Beyoung Self-Tracking and Reminders: Designing Smartphone Apps That Support Habi Formation
  PDF document / Resource

The key point is…

There are most important two functions one builds habits, the other one is reminders. If the app helps you build the habit effectively, it’s a strong indicator of its value and success.

Explore the market with Competitor Analysis

The report was made to know what kind of functions are common in the market checking the competitor analysis from 8 apps with a similar purpose. I also considered the limitations of the free versus paid functionalities.

Identify the user’s current problems with user testing

Conducted user testing with five participants, observing their behavior while completing two key tasks: ‘Build a habit’ and ‘Set a reminder’ across three competitor apps, using existing products before transitioning to our own.

Summary of key findings:

• Visuals to follow the habit must include a calendar
• Set repeating tasks is crucial for building habits
• Users expect individual control for each task
• Guide the users by using the explanation section
• Using familiar and clear words users can recognize

💡 If you are interested in more, here is the PDF document.

Information Architecture and Scratch

Based on IA, started the scratch with a blank canvas to focus on the fundamental layout and structure of the interface without getting distracted by visual details, and wrote down each page layout on one or two sheets of paper to explore various concepts.

After drawing wireframes by hand, transformed them into a Figma file and made wireframes and prototypes that are 6 mobile app layouts for different concepts such as “being more customizable”, “avoiding navigation”, and “focusing on daily tasks”.

After using each prototype, I wrote down parts that contradicted the design decision and parts that were different from my expectations and came up with a new layout.