The goal of this project was to design a mobile application that empowers individuals to build personalized strategies for achieving their goals while maintaining motivation throughout the process. By integrating structured planning, habit tracking, and social accountability, the app transforms goal-setting from a passive aspiration into an actionable, engaging experience.
View PrototypeAs a key contributor to this project, I led the user research, competitive analysis, and synthesis of insights that informed our design strategy. I played an integral role in defining the problem space, conceptualizing solutions, and translating findings into wireframes, prototypes, and final visual designs. Additionally, I conducted usability testing and iterations to refine the user experience based on feedback.
Duration: 3 weeks
Tools Used: Figma, Adobe Suite, Trello, Miro
In an era of high-paced lifestyles and competing priorities, young professionals increasingly struggle with effective time management and long-term goal achievement. Many experience difficulty initiating personal projects and maintaining momentum throughout the process. Existing productivity tools often act as passive trackers rather than active guides that provide structured support for long-term success.
To succeed, users require structured yet adaptable support systems that integrate seamlessly into their daily routines. Whether optimizing productivity, improving workflows, or achieving long-term transformation, they seek clarity, motivation, and accountability to stay on track.
Working within an agile, collaborative team of three UX designers, we adopted an iterative approach rooted in user-centered principles, the process consists of conducting research, synthesizing insights, and rapidly prototyping solutions. Each iteration was informed by user findings and feedback, ensuring a solution that is intuitive, impactful, and thoughtfully crafted to address both the functional and emotional needs of users.
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Understanding the psychological and behavioral barriers to goal achievement was critical to designing an effective solution. Our research sought to answer three fundamental questions:
1. What types of goals do people strive to achieve?
2. How do successful goal-setters structure their progress?
3. What prevents individuals from following through on their goals?
Our research was conducted in two key phases. The first involved one-on-one interviews with five young professionals to uncover user behaviors and pain points. The second focused on understanding the psychology of motivation and goal achievement, examining concepts such as habit streaks, prioritization of tasks, the SMART goals framework, and the distinctions between life-changing and life-enhancing objectives.
Research uncovered several critical behavioral patterns and gave us a deeper understanding of the underlying psychological drivers behind them:
Time Blocking & Streaks
A break-down of bigger challenges into smaller, actionable tasks would allow people to move forward in achievable increments. Once a streak begins, users are more likely to carry through with the momentum.
Visualization
Clear representations of progress such as goal tracking and milestone indicators, can be a big driver of motivation and provide users with a sense of control and achievement.
Support Network
A supportive friend group can help people stay on track, seeing each other’s progress fosters accountability, engagement, feedback and encouragement, reinforcing positive behaviors and inspirations.
Incentives & Accountability
A well-designed reward system (e.g., badges, levels, points) enhances commitment by celebrating accomplishments and reinforcing motivation.
Synthesizing our research insights, we developed a persona to contextualize the psychographics, goals, needs, behavior patterns, and pain points of our potential user group to guide our design decisions.
- Career-driven with a demanding schedule and bustling social life.
- Frequently sets personal and professional goals but struggles with consistency and motivation.
- Values efficiency, productivity and seeks a structured yet flexible system that helps him stay on track without feeling overwhelmed.
We believe that by providing an intelligent, automated system for structuring and tracking goals, we can enable ambitious individuals to stay committed, productive, and fulfilled throughout their journey.
Leveraging structured brainstorming techniques (e.g., "I Like, I Wish, What If"), UX exercises such as user journey map, and a feature prioritization matrix during our team working sessions, we were able to preliminarily contextualize our ideas, visualize the user flow through a sequence of scenarios, and distill our findings into core functionalities that aligned with user behaviors. The most impactful features from initial ideation included:
1. Automated scheduling that integrates goal-related tasks into users’ existing routines.
2. Daily habit streaks that reinforce consistency through visual progress tracking.
3. Intelligent reminders and notifications to prompt action at the right moment, e.g., when certain tasks are due.
4. Curated content recommendations to support goal achievement with relevant insights.
A detailed existing market competitor analysis revealed key limitations in existing productivity and goal-tracking tools. While many feature a dashboard interface with thorough functionalities and a peer-to-peer environment for internal reviews and feedback, most applications feel like a passive habit tracking tool that requires users to manually log progress and break down their goals into smaller daily tasks on their own. Additionally, few offered an adaptive scheduling system that dynamically adjusted to users' changing priorities.
Dun sought to differentiate itself by shifting from passive tracking to active engagement, offering intelligent automation, structured guidance, and social reinforcement to enhance goal achievement.
Initial ideation sessions resulted in multiple wireframe sketches, which we refined through dot voting and internal feedback. These wireframes were then translated into a lo-fi prototype for usability testing.
The initial testing provided valuable feedback and inspiration, enabling us to refine the user flow, enhance visual clarity, improve UI and graphic components. These insights helped minimize confusion and create a more seamless user experience.
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Our color palette takes a hybrid approach that combines a primary theme color that promotes focus, calmness, determination, with secondary colors that adds a fun and engaging touch. Since many of our features rely heavily on UI components - such as the interactive calendar, schedule, feeds, scorecards, badges and pictograms - we prioritized a cohesive and uniform visual experience across all elements, optimizing usability on mobile screens.
Building on insights from initial testing, we developed a mid-fidelity prototype for further evaluation and testing. User flows and functionalities were further refined to enhance the overall experience and usability.
To determine the most effective way to visualize progress, we conducted A/B testing on different design elements such as progress bars, rings, and color variations. Additionally, we explored more intuitive methods for showcasing daily goal completion vs. long-term achievements.
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The high-fidelity prototype incorporated the learnings from previous iterations and introduced a refined iOS experience. Key features included:
1. Smart scheduling that syncs with users' calendars to create goal-based plans.
2. Structured daily schedule that highlights action items and progress.
3. Dynamic feed page featuring curated content tailored to individual goals.
4. Personal dashboard/profile visualizing short-term streaks and long-term achievements.
5. Social component that fosters motivation through peer engagement.
Welcome
Enter Goals
Schedule
Edit Goals
Feed
Profile
Friends
Notification
One of the most valuable lessons from this project was the importance of aligning on features and scope early in the process, enabling a more effective deep dive into the details. Additionally, collaborative exercises such as sketching, dot voting, and iterative prototyping proved instrumental in sharing and refining our ideas efficiently. Most importantly, incorporating psychological research on motivation ensured that our design choices resonated deeply with users.
Looking ahead, we plan to:
- Enhance goal-tracking dashboards to provide more granular progress insights.
- Introduce greater flexibility in goal adjustments to accommodate evolving user needs.
- Refine the overview screen to offer both daily and long-term goal perspectives.
Dun is more than just a habit tracker—it is a personalized strategy tool that bridges the gap between ambition and execution. By integrating smart scheduling, habit-forming techniques, and social engagement, we created an experience that empowers users to take control of their goals in a structured, motivating, and rewarding way.
