bondit
A habit-tracking app where you build habits with friends instead of going it alone.
Self-improvement and habit formation are increasingly popular among young people, but staying consistent is hard, and most people only have themselves for motivation. I designed a habit-tracking app that uses social interaction to make habit-building collaborative and fun. When a habit is a shared goal with friends, you have a reason to keep showing up.
Going it alone rarely sticks
Young adults trying to self-improve and form new habits struggle to stay consistent and hold themselves accountable when they’re the only source of motivation. Without connection or stakes, momentum fades fast, and most habit apps do nothing to fix it.
Built around social connection
Bondit helps users build healthy habits with friends by creating “bonds”, groups around a shared habit where friends snap a daily photo to keep the streak alive. It feels less like tracking a habit and more like keeping up with friends.
The turning point was a rename. The research kept pointing the same way, so I changed Habits to Bonds and rebuilt the core flow around shared habits instead of solo tracking.
Strengthen bonds with shared habits
The Bonds page is where you and friends build lasting habits together, create groups, set shared goals, and track progress by snapping photos to keep streaks alive. Personal and group streak stats sit up top for motivation, with friends, bond groups, and galleries of captured moments below.
Journaling for flexible progress
Daily habit tracking isn’t the only way to measure progress. User interviews showed many people journal alongside or instead of tracking. Bondit lets you write, tag, and filter journal entries, then share them with friends or keep them private.
Stay connected with your community
Your Bonds bring every shared habit into one place, and each one carries its own streak, photo posts, and group chat. An Activity feed ties it all together, surfacing every like, comment, and bond invite, so you never miss a moment with your people.
Understanding the problem space
Assessed existing habit-tracking apps to find their weak points, especially around the social aspects, and where Bondit could improve.
Reviewed scientific evidence for social motivation in building and maintaining habits, backing the hypothesis that social interactivity drives consistency.
One-on-one interviews with five participants across different areas of habit formation, to understand real motivations, challenges, and strategies.
Involving friends or groups created a sense of obligation and motivation, from rock climbing together to small spiritual-practice groups.
Most participants used casual journaling as their primary tracking method, a surprise that reshaped the app away from pure habit tracking.
Past apps felt clunky and unengaging. Users wanted something familiar, closer to BeReal, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok.
What the research told me to build
Users want journaling as their preferred way to keep track, so it had to be a first-class part of the design.
Social features need to run throughout the app to make habit-forming more enjoyable, not bolted on.
A familiar UI that’s easy to pick up, echoing the apps users already reach for every day.
Mapping it out, then cutting it down
User flows & IA
I mapped out the app’s flows and page labeling, then ran a remote-moderated tree-test study to validate the information architecture before moving into wireframes.
Wireframe & prototype
I tested what was essential and cut the rest. A remote usability study confirmed my worry, some pages felt overwhelming with too many on-screen elements, so I revised toward less clutter and clearer navigation.
Early designs centered on personal habit tracking, with a dedicated Habits tab for individual progress. Testing pushed me somewhere else: the part people actually cared about was doing it together. So I renamed the tab to Bonds and built the main flow around shared habits instead of solo ones.
Warm, inviting, and consistent
I distilled my research into a small, familiar system built for daily use — an inviting palette, a clear type hierarchy, and a set of reusable components that keep every screen consistent.
Simplify, refine, focus
Using usability feedback, I simplified the app around its core purpose, connecting friends to form habits and journal, cutting the data-heavy pages the target audience didn’t value. I refined the UI to balance familiarity with a look of its own, keeping it easy to pick up and visually appealing.
Play with the prototype
Live front-end prototype — tap the bottom nav and icons to explore. Built in React from the Figma designs.
What I’m taking forward
When testing kept pushing the same direction, I changed the concept instead of just polishing the screens I had. Reframing Habits as Bonds did more for the product than any visual tweak.
I cut the data-heavy stats pages. They demoed well, but my users tracked casually through journaling and didn’t want them. Designing for the actual persona meant removing features, not adding them.
I validated the screens, but not the social loop itself. Next time I’d put the core accountability mechanic in front of a real friend group before refining UI — the product lives or dies on that behavior, not the pixels.