Case Study:

Prime Mobile App
Mobile Interface Design

A habit-busting mobile app designed to help you refine your time.

Discover Prime

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

–John Dryden

Habits are a topic of personal interest to me because my own desire to redefine my habits. It can take 18 days to form a new habit, and it takes 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. When it comes to redirecting our time, we need to break free from our defaulted habits. 66% of Americans check their phone 160 times per day, making smartphone app an efficacious tool for free-time-management. That is the premise of this student project.

Introduction

For this assignment, I was tasked to create and design a fictitious mobile app. When I thought of what sort of app I’d find useful, I initially leaned towards apps to help with productivity and time management. However, many apps of that sort already existed so I sought to do something different.

Instead, Prime is an app to help users manage their leisure time. It addresses a problem I’m all too familiar with: time lost to bad habits. I’ve tried like others to use my calendar, set timers, or create alarms to create productive leisure time, but the experience often turns resentful when the dreaded alarms go off and I’ve failed to do better with my time.

View the Prototype

Services

  • UI / UX Design
  • Branding
  • Copywriting

Software

  • Adobe XD
  • Illustrator

Conceptual Planning

The goal Prime’s UX/UI design was to create a positive experience around leisure-time-assistance so users would feel rewarded while using the app. As a result, repeated useage would be encouraged.

My challenge as a designer was to create design patterns that communicate directly to avoid the fuss around forming better habits or being nagged.

kpc typography

Laying out “Your Menu”

Design Patterns

The crux of Prime is the user’s ability to frequently view and edit their “Menu.” In conceptual planning, I explored various design patterns of the main interface that featured the Menu and sometimes a suggestion drawn from the Menu. I wanted to find a way to have users easily navigate to different sections of their menu and get recommendations for their day quickly.

Quick & Easy Comprehension

Considering the User Experience

The main interface featuring “Your Menu” uses a scroll-up design pattern that allows the user to scroll up to see the rest of their menu items and a horizontal-scrolling-tab-group that lets users peruse categories of their menu with ease. The main interface also offers suggestions from the user's menu for a direct route to start an activity and log their time. Users can easily get more reccomendations by swiping—a gesture that is natural to most phone-users today.

The Design

Prime’s branding was partly inspired by a the refined feeling of a wine menu and technology. I chose a wine menu as inspiration to further play with the “Menu” feature of Prime. The inspiration carried over into Prime’s mature color palette and typography which mirrors a wine menu. The technology inspired patterns, buttons, and gradients helps the brand feel current and stylish.

HiFi Prototypes

Your Menu

The Main Interface for easy perusing

  • Intuitive Left-Right Swipe-able Options
  • Scroll-Up List with horizontal tab-group

Activity Log

To keep track of your time and generate improved reccomendations

  • Ability to add Notes
  • Tips for mindfulness

Your Menu

The Main Interface for easy perusing

  • Intuitive Left-Right Swipe-able Options
  • Scroll-Up List with horizontal tab-group

Activity Log

To keep track of your time and generate improved reccomendations

  • Ability to add Notes
  • Tips for mindfulness

Your Menu

The Main Interface for easy perusing

  • Intuitive Left-Right Swipe-able Options
  • Scroll-Up List with horizontal tab-group

Check it!

View the Prototype