habit-tracking feels lonely? habit duo can fix that.
we created habit duo for buildspace nights & weekends season 4. the season culminated in a 3-day trip to san francisco where we met tons of other builders and got hella merch.
emelie nguyen, maxx yung
flutterflow (visual design, prototyping)
after graduating from high school this summer, maxx and i wanted to start working out. on our own, we would go for three days then quit. so insted, we tried holding each other accountable by checking in on each other. to really provide it, we'd send a picture too.
we tried doing this through signal, but would keep an external tally on obsidian. obviously, that was not the most efficient. so we tried snapchat for its daily streak feature instead. but weightlifting has rest days! how would it account for that? we hypothesized that this problem--forming good habits--could be solved with social accountability. but there was no good tool to do so.
that's where habit duo comes in.
this was my first ever design project. hell, this was the first imaginary product i've ever built. as i clumsily toiled with flutterflow, i eventually eeked out something resembling an app (at this point, i was not familiar with wireframes).
we liked snapchat's idea of keeping photo streaks with people, but we didn't like how there was no purpose to what you were sending. usually, you get a half-selfie ceiling photo like this (if you're lucky enough to not get a black screen).
furthemore, on snapchat or spotify wrapped people love posting their big numbers. snappies boast their 1000-day streak and spotifyers shine their 8,000 minutes listening to taylor swift (i wouldn't be so proud). we wanted to redirect this inane incentive to something more productive.
i mirrored the idea of snapchat's people scrolling view, but added a "purpose" or goal for each pic.
furthermore, snapchat's snaps are daily, but not all habits are done on a daily basis. for example, when weightlifting, you need rest days (if you disagree, i urge you to speak to a bodybuilder). to remedy this, we decided to implement dynamic streaks. duos can schedule their streaks to be daily, every three days, weekly, or every 2 weeks, 5 days, 4 hours, and 2 minutes.
to emulate the big number happy effect (emelie et al, 2023), i wanted to users to be able to display their longest duos in addition to what habit they're duo-ing. in addition, i included a section for users to add their favorite quote for all the atomic habits lovers.
this was my first product. for the first time, i actually thought about why certain apps attract me (and keep me) the way they do. this was the start of my design journey.