Case study
Designing a goal tracker that measures effort, not streaks
Most streak apps reward showing up for five minutes. This product asks for something harder: a locked plan, a handwritten daily checklist and an honest self-score. This is the story of how it is being designed.
Quick facts
- Industry
- SaaS and startups
- Product type
- Mobile and web app
- Platform
- Phones first, with a web view
- Timeline
- Planning and wireframes, September 2026
- Status
- Design stage
At a glance
What the design sets out to do
Plans that cannot drift
Once a goal starts, its steps and timeline are locked, so the goal cannot quietly shrink.
Effort written by hand
Each day's checklist is written on paper and photographed as proof.
The user decides
Users score their own day, with soft, mid and strict modes, instead of an algorithm deciding.
Goals as public stories
Public goals become case studies of their own, whatever the outcome.
The client
The client and the situation
The client is a founder with a clear point of view about personal goals. Their view of most habit and streak apps is simple: the app rewards the act of opening it, not the work done. Five minutes of effort and five hours of effort both keep the streak alive.
They came to us at the idea stage and asked for help turning them into a product that could actually be built. The work so far covers requirements, the scoring model, wireframes and a build plan. It is an MVP in the making.
The challenge
The challenge
The hard part is not the software. It is designing a product that measures effort honestly without becoming a chore. Every rule that makes cheating harder also makes the app harder to use. Every rule that makes it easier to use also makes it easier to fool yourself.
Some ideas pulled against each other. A locked plan protects the goal from drifting, but real life sometimes needs a pause. A photo of a handwritten checklist is strong proof, but only if it is quick to take. And letting users judge their own day respects them, but the design has to make honest judgment the easy choice.
Before
How the work was done before
Many people track goals like this: a notebook for plans, a streak app for daily check-ins and occasional reflection when things went wrong. The notebook held the real effort, but nothing connected it to the app. The app showed a long streak even in weeks when the notebook showed very little.
That gap is the whole idea behind the product. The design brings the notebook into the app instead of replacing it.
Objectives
What the project had to achieve
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Make the plan for each goal fixed once it starts, with clear steps and dates.
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Make daily proof quick: write the checklist by hand, take one photo, done.
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Let users score their own effort, with a mode that matches how strict they want to be.
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Show progress and effort over time in a way that is honest, not flattering.
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Let users share goals publicly, so others can follow and comment.
The solution
What we built
The design centers on three objects: the goal, the day and the proof. A goal has steps and a timeline, and once it starts, both are locked. Each date gets its own checklist of tasks. Each evening, the user photographs the handwritten checklist, marks whether it was written with their primary or opposite hand, and scores the day.
Scoring has three modes. Soft mode counts partial effort generously. Mid mode expects most tasks done. Strict mode counts only full completion. A streak freeze covers genuine breaks without breaking the plan. Progress and effort scores appear on a graph, and short insight messages point out patterns, such as effort that drops every weekend.
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Goals with steps
Each goal has steps and a timeline that lock once the goal begins.
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Daily checklists
A checklist created for each date, based on the plan.
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Handwritten proof
A photo of the handwritten checklist uploaded each day.
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Primary or opposite hand
Users mark which hand wrote the checklist, an optional extra challenge.
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Soft, mid and strict scoring
Three scoring modes so users choose how strict to be.
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Streak freeze
A limited way to pause without breaking the plan.
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Progress and effort graph
Progress and effort scores shown over time.
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Public goals and comments
Goals can be made public, and others can follow and comment.
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Insight messages
Short notes about patterns in the user's effort.
UX and UI
The UX and UI approach
The daily loop has to take under a minute, or people will stop. The wireframes put the day's checklist on the home screen, with one large button to add the photo. Scoring is a single choice after the photo, not a form. Everything else, such as graphs, public goals and settings, sits one level down.
The tone matters as much as the layout. The app should never shame a missed day or celebrate an easy one. Insight messages are written as plain observations, and the graph shows effort next to progress, so a user can see when a good streak hides a weak week.
Architecture
How the pieces fit together
This is the planned architecture, not a built one. A phone app talks to an app backend that stores goals, days and scores in a database and checklist photos in separate storage. Insight messages are generated from the stored scores. The plan keeps the first version small, so it can be tested with real users before anything more is added.
One open question is whether to read the handwritten checklists with a multimodal AI model, for example to count ticked items. The current design deliberately does not: the user decides, and the photo is proof, not data. That choice may be revisited after launch, based on what users want.
AI-accelerated
Where AI sped up the build
Honest about what AI did, and what people did.
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Requirements exploration: AI helped turn the founder's notes into user stories, open questions and conflicts between ideas, which we then worked through together.
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Scoring model design: AI helped compare scoring rules for each mode against sample weeks, which made the trade-offs visible quickly.
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Wireframes: first wireframes were generated from the user stories and then reworked by hand.
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The plan document: AI drafted the product plan from our workshop notes. We edited it with the founder into the current plan.
Integrations
Integrations
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Photo upload
Checklist photos taken in the app and stored with each day.
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Reminders
Planned reminders for the daily checklist and photo.
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Public goal pages
Planned public pages for goals that users choose to share.
Screens
Concept screens
Simple mockups of the described interface. Real screenshots will replace them.
Concept screen
Concept screen
Results
Where the design stands
There are no user results yet, because the app is not built. What exists is a clear, tested design: requirements, a scoring model with three modes, wireframes for the core loop and a build plan for a first version. The founder has a product that can be estimated, built in stages and explained to early users.
The design work also settled the hardest questions early. The plan locks. The user scores. The photo is proof, not data for an algorithm. Those decisions shape every screen, and making them before writing code is far cheaper than changing them after.
What the team can do now
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Explain the product in one sentence and show the core loop on screen.
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Estimate and plan the first version from a clear scope.
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Test the scoring modes with sample weeks before any code is written.
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Start the build knowing which features wait for later.
Before and after
Before and after
Notes and a streak app
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Real effort lives in a paper notebook.
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A streak app rewards opening the app, not doing the work.
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Plans change quietly when goals get hard.
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Ideas conflict, and nobody has written down the rules.
A buildable product design
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Plans lock once a goal starts.
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The handwritten checklist becomes the daily proof.
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Users score their own effort in the mode they choose.
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Requirements, scoring model, wireframes and plan are agreed.
What comes next
What we would do next
The next step is to build the core loop as a cross-platform app: goals, daily checklists, photo proof and scoring. Public goals, comments and insights follow once the loop is used every day by a first group of users.
After launch, we would review how people actually use the scoring modes and the streak freeze, and adjust. We would also revisit whether AI should read the checklist photos, using our computer vision work, but only if users ask for it. We will update this page when the app is live.
Solutions in this project
Problems this project solved
Feedback analysis
Read every review, survey and ticket, group them by theme and sentiment, and show what customers keep asking for.
AI-assisted content workflows
Briefs, first drafts, edits and repurposing in a workflow where people set the angle and approve every word.
Keep exploring
Related case studies, services and industries
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