cohabit
project details
Role: UI/UX Designer
Duration: Jan. 2024 - June 2024
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Team: Tiffany Zheng, Stephanie Ton, Diana Tran
project overview
Cohabit is an app that aids in struggles with consistency when it comes to adopting new habits, where lack of motivation, accountability, and social support are common barriers. We seek to solve this problem by leveraging social connections to encourage users to establish and sustain positive habits. By integrating features that prompt users to share their habit-related activities with friends and local communities, the app creates a supportive environment that fosters motivation and accountability.
"Recently, I have been self-critical and deeply disappointed in myself for not being able to keep healthy habits, or if I'm not performing how I would like. I catastrophize easily and feel like a failure. Having a person also be aware of my private goals and habits feels too intrusive into my life, even if they are trusted friends. I don't want the pressure of not only disappointing myself but also disappointing others."
Our team conducted user surveys to identify potential pain points and user needs.
Questions we asked:
What are the biggest challenges you face when trying to build/maintain good habits?
Would you be interested in using a social app to enhance your habit-building? If not, briefly explain why.
User Research
User Research Findings
"Seems hard to track and also seems like a lot of work to manually input things to track. If there was some automatic way of tracking good habits like (EX: Fitbit for walking) I'd be more into it."
User Personas
After conducting user research, our team created user personas in order to identify the most important pain points, needs, goals, and solutions.
About
24 years old
Post-grad working in Tech
ambitious
loves keeping in touch with friends
Trying to find work-life balance
Establishing better personal wellness habits (skincare, journaling)
Goals
Busy schedule causes her to skip her habits
Adjusting to completing wellness habits
Alone and not with roommates
Issues
Consistent reminders and notifications to keep on track with goals
Ability to connect and share with friends
Effortless and non-time consuming habit tracking
Needs
Cindy Zhang
Cindy Zhang
About
20 years old
Undergrad
Passionate about personal health
Introvert
Academic weapon
Adventurous
Goals
Trying to build well-rounded gym routine
Trying to implement cooking rather than eating out to save money
Trying to expand his hobbies
Issues
Difficult to balance consistent gym routine and academics
Gets distracted from personal duties with other people
Lazy to meal-prep
Prefers his habits/life to be private
Finding new challenges or goals to take on to better his health
Stays in the loop with what is going on - takes inspiration from other people to stay motivated
Needs
Nick Peterson
problems
through research and analyzing the user personas, users expressed that:
consistency
motivation
social anxiety
were all challenges in building and maintaining habits.
How can we create a platform that effectively boosts motivation, making the habit-building process enjoyable and accessible to users in a fun and engaging way?
solution
Our app aims to solve these problems through:
accessibility: ensures that the app is accessible to a diverse user base
incentive: implement features that motivate users to consistency engage in habit-building activites to ensure a sustained interest in the app
ease of use: design an app with a simple but effective interface which makes features easy to use, so the user is inclined to track their habits
Visual Identity
primary: brand color
accent
complimentary:
buttons, icons
Outfit (H1)
Outfit (H2)
Outfit (H3)
Outfit (H4)
Outfit (large paragraph)
16px / Regular / 3% / profile bios
Outfit (small paragraph)
14px / Regular / 3% / General text, habit descriptions
Outfit (H4)
20px / Regular / 3% / Buttons
40 px / Semibold / Landing page title
30 px / Semibold / Account Creation flow
24 px / Semibold / Page headers
Colors
Typography
Icons
Components
navigation bar
calendar
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Group
Individual
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Individual
radio buttons
↳ Since the basis of the user experience revolves around a consistent user retention rate, our team opted for a minimalistic design in order to make the overall experience as seamless, simple, and accessible as possible— hence the airy feel of the iconography and components.
Logo Design
original brainstorm
earlier Adobe Illustrator iterations
My team's vision for the logo was to have a minimalistic mascot that resembled a venn diagram, as individuals using the app would be growing in tandem with one another :). With the whole team (including devs!), we decided on a rabbit motif so that we could somehow incorporate a memorable mascot for the future.
Final Solutions
01 Header
02 Navigation Control
03 Month View Grid
04 Streak Markers
Calendar Page
Anatomy:
Interface
Early Interations
01 Header
02 Form: Habit Name, Duration of Habit
03 Input Field: Description, Color, Group or Individual
04 Visual: Choosing the photo
Habit Creation Page
Anatomy:
Interface
Early Iterations
alternative user flow
🖇️ Final Thoughts:
What I learned:
This was my first ever semi-serious UI/UX project, and I grew SO incredibly much— both as a designer and a person. The growth I value the most is a keener sense of project management. Gaining experience in managing a design project from start to finish, working with a team to set goals, meeting deadlines, and coordinating tasks helped me develop essential skills in communication and organization in a project environment. After all, I only had 7 weeks to complete what you see in this case study!
I also learned how to design with the user in mind. Coming from a graphic design background, I used to design solely for aesthetics and branding. However, this project taught me that product design is all about the user— whether it be surveys, interviews— understanding the target audience is essential in creating a great product.
Looking Forward:
In the future, I'd want to conduct further in-depth user testing in order to genuinely validate my designs, rather than to design based off of aesthetics and initial assumptions.
I'd also want to work further with the developers in order to really flesh out the features that the app has to offer, and how these features could seamlessly integrate with each other within the app.
Finally, I want to improve my critical design thinking to be able to design iteratively with the user in mind. I learnt the difference between an average designer and a great designer— its one who is able to balance aesthetics, functionality, and user experience. I am excited to be working hard everyday in order to attain this level of design wisdom! :D
JOANNA BUI