01
Study real routines
Two-week diary studies revealed that a check-in longer than forty seconds simply didn’t survive bedtime.
← All work 
Dayloop · Habit & mood tracker
A calmer way to track habits and mood
Most trackers shame you for breaking a streak. Dayloop takes the opposite stance — a gentle daily loop of habits, energy and mood that helps people notice patterns instead of chasing perfection.
- Client
- Dayloop
- Year
- 2025
- Role
- Product designer
- Platform
- iOS & Android
Overview
Dayloop’s founders came with a hypothesis backed by their own failed streaks: guilt-driven design burns users out. They asked Screenwright Studio to design a tracker people would still open in month six — one built on curiosity about yourself rather than compliance with a plan.
Across eight weeks I shaped the end-to-end mobile experience: onboarding, the daily check-in loop, weekly reflections and the visual language that holds it all together.
The challenge
Diary studies with sixteen participants showed that existing apps failed in two predictable ways: check-ins took too long, so evenings got skipped, and missed days triggered red badges and broken streaks that made restarting feel worse than quitting.
The design problem was emotional as much as functional. Every screen — empty states, reminders, weekly summaries — had to encourage a return without a hint of judgement, while still giving motivated users meaningful trends.
Approach
02
Kill the streak
Replaced streaks with “rhythm” — a soft weekly pattern view where gaps are data, not failure.
03
Prototype the feeling
Motion studies and microcopy drafts were tested for tone: warm, plain-spoken, never chirpy.
04
Test in the wild
A forty-person beta over three weeks validated the loop before visual polish was locked.
Outcome
- A 40-second loopThe daily check-in fits into the smallest evening gap, and beta testers described it as “the first tracker that doesn’t nag”.
- Reflections people readWeekly summaries frame patterns as gentle questions, giving users a reason to return every Sunday.
- Launch-ready systemA complete component library and tone guide let the founders extend the app without losing its calm.
