Conscious and Motivated Habit Building With Practiqa

Description

Practiqa is more than a usual habit tracker — it's a habit coach based on behavioral psychology and personal motivation to acquire new habits consciously.
Technologies
API:FastAPI, Pydantic, Async Databases, SQLAlchemy, Redis, PostgreSQL, Uvicorn
Admin:Django 3, Redis, Celery, JavaScript, PostgreSQL
iOS:Swift, RxSwift, Native network layer: URLSession, Main architectural pattern: MVP
Our role and company services
UI/UX Design, Backend, Mobile Development

The challenge

The Client reached out to us with the idea of making a habit-trainer application. Initially, there was a simple idea and plain wireframes. However, as the project progressed, the product evolved into a full-fledged, sophisticated solution requiring full-circle team involvement.
Throughout the process, the Client's product owner was testing various market hypotheses while our Team was making flexible, adaptive changes in the agile development process based on the test results of each hypothesis. The scrum-based approach, however, imposed certain complications on budget management.

Pivot 1

The project started with an app mockup to test hypotheses and monitor the market demand. The prototype required almost no backend. And the Client's market analysis defined further development.

Pivot 2

The introduction of design changed the app's logic and brought up the need to develop more functions and, as a result, complex backend architecture. It was the project's turning point that required significant budget and resource adjustments.

Pivot 3

The successful project implementation mainly depended on close and interactive collaboration with the Client. According to the scrum best practices, the scope of work was broken down into short sprints followed by performance reviews and analysis. It was to help us adapt to the rapidly changing environment.

Overview of interface and functionality

Levels and achievements

Motivation is an essential part of conscious habit building. We developed a complex, personalized system of Levels and Achievements. This system is aimed to provide a unique experience to each user based on their activity and progress. These features are customizable and integrated with the app's calendar and alarm. As a part of sensible habit training, the user gets a visualized personal progress overview.

Events

Achieving new Levels unlocks Events. It's a branched and personalized system based on tracking the user's activity. We designed the event screens the way the user would celebrate each Level and even the smallest Achievement. Encouragement is the most important part of self-motivation, whether it's the first day of building a habit or congratulating on finding the user's optimal habit time.

Habits

The app's default habits include Reading, Meditation, Working Out, and Yoga. Users can use the feedback form to notify the client of the Habits they'd like to include in their routine. The solution has the potential to add an unlimited number of Habits. The internal algorithm is to sort them by categories.

The Habits are highly customizable: users can define the practice time and duration and set reminders and alarms at desired times. The app provides personalized suggestions that make the process easy and enjoyable. Besides these features, users are encouraged to talk to a Habit Coach to get the best experience.

Stories

The Stories block was inspired by the concept of the same name actively used on social networks. The idea is well-known to every digital citizen around the world. By using Stories, Practiqa shares useful content with the user in the form of reading of the day. The app generates personalized Stories based on the user's Level and habit type. It's an effective way to communicate with users and engage the community. Through Stories, users can also share their progress and achievements on social media.

Progress bar

Practiqa provides the user with more than just a standard progress bar. The progress overview changes depending on how the user progresses with the Habit — whether they open the app, use the timer, perform the Habit, answer Self-Reflection questions, etc. So does the number of Events. In this approach, the user needs to reach 100% and open all Events on the current Level to unlock the next Level.

Self-reflections

In behavioral psychology, self-reflections play a vital role in habit training. Based on the user's answers in the Self-Reflections block, the app provides personalized recommendations on improving the process. Besides, this block engages the user by offering to participate in the Experiment after reaching certain Levels. The Experiment helps the user increase the habit time smoothly yet consciously.

Admin panel

Our Team designed the Admin Panel the way to provide maximal variability to the Client. The admin access makes all app's functions fully adjustable — from changing fonts, colors, and backgrounds to experimenting with the user's reaction to certain changes and monitoring user behavior.

Creating Quizzes
We designed a complex branched system of Quizzes that allows admins to create any number of pages according to the user's answers. Creating Quizzes helps the Client improve the feedback system and user communication, as well as test more hypotheses for reaching a broader audience.

Personalizing Events
Events in mobile apps are essential for keeping the user motivated and encouraged. With admin access to Events in Practiqa, the Client can make each Level unique and fully personalized for each user. They can serve as the analytics tool to monitor user behavior. There's also a way to create the app's Easter egg to entertain the user throughout the progress.

Push notifications

Push notifications are another good way to communicate with users and increase user engagement. We chose the approach of gentle reminders instead of aggressive direct messaging. The push notification system is integrated with Stories. If the user misses the routine, the app invites them to catch up with the latest personalized Stories, which motivate them to go on with the process.

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Numbers

4.5
months
of development from the idea to a full-fledged solution
user flow
by developing strong and effective backend architecture
200+
unique screens
with their own complex logic
10,000+
active users per minute
4
levels
of habit training
5
self-reflection scenarios
with an option to add experiments
70+
versions
of user analytics
of customizable habits
users can add in the future

Results

Practiqa is a next-level habit-creation app that uses behavioral science to motivate users through a complex encouragement system.

The solution has an elaborated backend architecture that enables the full range of business and performance analytics — user behavior monitoring, market hypothesis testing, and user reaction exploring.

The application doesn't require registration and provides a unique experience for each user. The registration is advised to transfer your data and user history to another device.

We created a complex and effective admin panel that provides the Client with full flexibility to adjust the existing functions and add new entities without further involvement of any developer team.

Talk to us!

Send us a message and we'll get in touch with you as soon as we can.
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