“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger.”
This is a quote from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, probably one of the most famous modern books written on habits. It sounds so simple to improve your life by making many small improvements and then sticking to them constantly. Yet, this can be one of the hardest things to do for us. In this group project for the Human-Computer Interaction course at ETH Zurich, we developed a prototype for a habit tracker. The ultimate goal of this tracking is to aid users in keeping their habits.
Need-finding#
After conducting several need-finding interviews, we noticed a common theme:
- People want habit tracking to be frictionless
- Simplicity beats complexity
With that in mind, our goal was clear: build a simple habit tracker that combines the benefits of digital tracking with minimal effort required from the user.
Frictionless Habit Tracking#
Most habit-tracking apps require a multi-step process:
- Unlock smartphone
- Open habit tracking app
- Locate the desired habit
- Mark habit as completed
In our approach, we fuse all of these steps into a single step of scanning an NFC tag. The NFC tag is registered to the specific habit you complete and located where you typically complete it. It can also serve as a reminder to complete the habit.
Our app also features some simple statistics to motivate the user. If we ever find more time to work on it, we would like to extend it with location-based habit completion and explore more engaging data visualizations.