Timeline: January-February 2024

My Role: Product design

Client: Turtly

Project: Mobile iOS app design

Bringing a New Productivity App Concept to Life

About Turtly

Turtly is an iOS productivity app conceptualized by a new startup founder. Turtly leverages a unique coupon rewards system to help people stay motivated and achieve their goals.

Challenge

Create a high-fidelity iOS app prototype based on client concept drawings. Handoff MVP screens and documentation to an iOS developer for implementation.

Short video I created in Figma for the client to use when introducing the app to investors.

Positioning Turtly in a Saturated Market

Navigating Ambiguity

The client came to me with a new productivity app concept where users are rewarded with coupons for achieving their goals. At the beginning of the project, I discovered that the client did not yet have brand partnerships for coupon offerings and was unsure which brands/how many brands he would end up partnering with.

Due to significant ambiguity concerning the app’s original value proposition, I recommended creating an app that de-emphasized the coupon rewards system and emphasized the organizational and goal-setting aspects of the product. This way, no matter what happened with the brand partnerships, he would still end up with a well-built productivity app that provides users with value beyond extrinsic rewards.

Competitive Analysis

Since minimal research was performed before the app’s conception, I decided to examine competitors to understand where this app could fit within the market. Through this research, I discovered that:

  1. The productivity app landscape is incredibly saturated.

  2. Personal productivity apps are part of two main categories: To-do list apps and Goal/Habit apps. To-do apps focus solely on helping users stay organized with day-to-day tasks, while Goal/Habit apps aim to help users track progress toward achieving goals or maintaining habits.

  3. Habit/goal-tracking apps tend to be less user-friendly than to-do list apps based on UX heuristics and often lack a to-do list feature. If they have a to-do list feature, it has very minimal functionality.

Where Goal/Habit Tracking Apps Fall Short:

Besides usability, the overarching issue with with goal/habit tracking apps is that they treat goals, habits, and tasks as if they exist on separate planes. However, in reality, these concepts are interconnected. For example, according to James Clear (author of “Atomic Habits”), goals set the direction, habits are consistent actions taken to achieve the goal, and tasks are the building blocks of those actions.

Opportunity

There is a place within the market for for a new productivity app that not only emphasizes usability but also contextualizes task completion within the framework of achieving broader goals.

Snapshot of the competitive analysis where I examined 12 different productivity apps’ features and compared their usability, complexity, reward systems, and value propositions.

Sketches

Sketching is always a big part of my process, especially in the early stages of designing a brand new app. During the sketching phase, I outlined main user flows, blocked out key screen layouts and elements, and explored what edge cases might look like.

Concept Validation Through Usability Testing

I leveraged usability testing as an opportunity to both test out my wireframes and discuss the challenges associated with productivity and goal completion with my 6 testing participants.

Through generative research questions, I found out that poor time management is the main thing stopping people from achieving personal goals. Interestingly, this isn’t as much of an issue at work because work-related organization methods are far more structured compared to the laid-back approaches people use in their personal lives. Participants mentioned that their current tools (memory, Google Keep, custom Google Sheets, Apple Notes) for personal organization are flawed in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and usability.

This mirrors the market need for a productivity app that emphasizes usability and focuses on helping people achieve goals that I identified during competitive research.

Turtly App Design

Contextualizing Tasks and Goals

I used empty states to embed the concept that task completion is related to goal achievement throughout the user experience.

Empty states within the app; used to onboard new users and remind returning users how tasks/goals are connected throughout the app’s experience.

Examples of what the previous empty state screens look like with information added.

A Customizable, Flexible App

Because people struggle with time management when it comes to achieving personal goals, I created time-bound goals with due dates (find out more about the importance of time-bound goals here). I also created tasks that can be scheduled advance, repeat at custom intervals, and trigger reminders to help users stay on track and build healthy habits.

During usability testing, participants also mentioned that they often feel overwhelmed when they have too much on their plate. To help people prioritize tasks and reduce cognitive load, I created a filtering system within Turtly that allows users to filter tasks by goal.

Keep Track with Stats

The client requested a Stats feature that provides users with a visual representation of their efforts toward achieving goals.

Feature Validation:

  • 6/6 participants responded positively to the concept of stats during usability testing.

  • 2/6 participants mentioned that they gravitate towards self-improvement apps with data-driven dashboards because they find the numbers motivating.

Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly Stats screens.

Complete Tasks, Get Rewards

The Rewards feature was designed to help users stay motivated by offering them coupons for completing tasks and achieving goals.

Because of the ambiguity regarding brand partnerships, Turtly does not depend on this feature to offer users value. Instead, the app leverages intrinsic rewards by helping users set goals and stay organized, with coupon rewards as an added extrinsic motivator.

Coupon rewards user flow example.

Conclusion

This client came to me with concept drawings for an app he wanted recreated in Figma and lots of assumptions about the app’s potential users. Throughout this project, I showed the client the importance of research-backed design decisions, usability, accessibility, etc., and made recommendations that reshaped the core of Turtly as a product.

Recommendations that drove the project:

  1. Designing a productivity app that provides the user with intrinsic rewards first, and extrinsic rewards second.

  2. Utilizing iOS components (when appropriate) to speed up development.

  3. Accessible interface colors.

At the end of the project, I handed off:

  1. Over 100 screens built in Figma with developer annotations.

  2. A clickable prototype.

  3. A foundational component library.