Year
2017
My Role
Founder, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Strategy, Product Management, App Store Optimization, Analytics, User Support
Problem Discovery
The idea for Life stemmed from a personal experience. My wife and I were trying to start a family but faced two miscarriages within a year. Each doctor we consulted recommended tracking specific symptoms, such as "Abdominal Pain" and "Ovary Pain," in relation to her cycle. However, none of the existing health tracking apps allowed for this level of customization.
Through further research, I identified key gaps in the market:
Lack of Flexibility: Existing apps only offered predefined symptom lists, preventing users from logging personalized health data.
User Frustration: App Store reviews revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the inability to tailor health tracking to individual needs.
Missed Opportunities: Without the ability to track custom data, users struggled to gain meaningful insights and communicate effectively with healthcare providers.
This discovery highlighted a clear need for a solution that prioritized user control and personalization. Life was envisioned as a tool that would empower users to track their unique health data, providing them with actionable insights and improving the way they managed their health journeys.
User Research
To ensure Life addressed real user needs, I conducted extensive research focused on understanding the target audience and identifying gaps in the existing health tracking market. This phase was critical, as I was not the end-user, and building an app that resonated required deep empathy and user insights.
Research Methods
Competitive Analysis: Downloaded and analyzed every health tracking app on the App Store, purchasing upgrades to benchmark functionality, user flows, and feature gaps.
App Store Reviews: Studied hundreds of reviews to uncover common frustrations, unmet needs, and feature requests directly from users.
User Interviews: Conducted interviews with individuals who tracked their health to understand their workflows, challenges, and priorities.
Secondary Research: Reviewed market trends and studies on women’s health tracking to ensure the app aligned with broader user expectations and behaviors.
Key Insights
Desire for Customization: Users consistently voiced the need to track data unique to their health situations, such as specific symptoms, moods, and habits.
Navigation Simplicity: Many users found existing apps overly complex, making quick data entry a challenge.
Communication Gaps: Users wanted to easily share their logged data with doctors, but existing tools lacked exportable reports or meaningful data visualization.
These findings directly informed the design of Life, shaping its focus on customization, simplicity, and actionable insights. This user-centered approach ensured the app addressed real-world problems while standing out in a competitive market.
Ideation & Concept Development
With a clear understanding of user needs from research, I began brainstorming how to create a health tracker that prioritized flexibility, simplicity, and usability. This phase focused on generating ideas that addressed the identified gaps while aligning with the technical constraints of a small, two-person team.
Key Priorities
Customizable Tracking: Users needed the ability to create and log unique symptoms, moods, and health data categories tailored to their specific needs.
Ease of Use: The app had to balance robust functionality with an intuitive user experience, ensuring quick and seamless data entry.
Actionable Insights: Data needed to be presented in a meaningful way, enabling users to easily share insights with healthcare providers.
Concept Development Process
Sketching and Mapping: I started with rough sketches to explore information hierarchy and workflows, focusing on how users would navigate and interact with key features.
Feature Prioritization: I narrowed the scope to an MVP that included essential functionalities: custom tags, categories, a calendar view, and exportable PDF reports.
User Flow Mapping: Mapped user flows to ensure seamless navigation and minimize friction in high-priority actions like logging data and reviewing health trends.
The ideation process led to a concept for Life that was both innovative and feasible, combining customizable health tracking with a clean, user-friendly interface. This foundation set the stage for iterative prototyping and design refinement.
Wireframes & Prototyping
With the core concept defined, I began translating ideas into tangible designs through wireframing and prototyping. This phase focused on refining user flows, testing functionality, and ensuring the app would deliver a seamless experience while meeting user needs.
Wireframing Process
Low-Fidelity Wireframes: Created basic wireframes to map out the structure and layout of key screens, focusing on navigation, information hierarchy, and primary actions like logging data and reviewing summaries.
Iterative Improvements: Conducted internal reviews and adjusted wireframes based on feedback to optimize the flow between features like the calendar, health logs, and custom tracking.
Balancing Simplicity and Functionality: Ensured the wireframes incorporated all critical features while maintaining an uncluttered and intuitive interface.
Prototyping Process
Interactive Prototypes: Built clickable prototypes to simulate user interactions, enabling early testing of navigation and workflows.
User Feedback: Tested prototypes with a small group of target users to validate ease of use and identify pain points.
Iterative Testing: Refined prototypes based on user feedback, improving navigation flows, button placement, and overall usability.
By the end of this phase, the app’s framework and core interactions were well-defined, providing a strong foundation for visual design and further development. Wireframing and prototyping ensured the app’s functionality was intuitive and aligned with user expectations.
Visual Design
The visual design phase focused on creating an interface that was both aesthetically pleasing and functional, ensuring that Life was intuitive, engaging, and aligned with modern design trends. This process balanced user needs, technical constraints, and the evolving iOS design guidelines.
Design Objectives
Clarity and Usability: Prioritized clean layouts and accessible typography to ensure users could quickly log and review health data without confusion.
Emotionally Resonant Aesthetic: Leveraged a calming color palette and elegant visuals to create a sense of trust and personalization, aligning with the app’s focus on health and wellness.
Alignment with iOS Guidelines: Transitioned from skeuomorphic to flat design to stay consistent with Apple’s design principles during the shift from iOS 6 to iOS 7.
Design Elements
Color Palette: Developed a palette of soft, vibrant colors that balanced visual delight with accessibility, ensuring key actions and categories were easily distinguishable.
Typography: Used modern, thin font weights for a clean, professional feel while maintaining readability across all devices.
Imagery: Incorporated background images and subtle gradients in key areas, such as the countdown screen, to evoke an emotional connection and foster engagement.
Adapting to Constraints
Designed layouts and interactions that leveraged iOS-native components to simplify development and maintain a polished, cohesive look.
Focused on minimalism to reduce cognitive load and ensure new users could navigate the app effortlessly.
The final visual design combined clarity, simplicity, and emotional appeal, making Life visually distinct while enhancing its functionality. This attention to detail played a key role in building user trust and driving engagement.
Development Constraints
As a two-person team, the development of Life came with significant constraints that required creative problem-solving and thoughtful prioritization. These challenges influenced every aspect of the app’s design and development process, shaping a solution that balanced feasibility with innovation.
Key Constraints
First-Time Developer: My wife, who handled coding, was a first-time developer learning as we progressed. This required designing within the limits of her growing skill set while ensuring a high-quality user experience.
Limited Resources: With no external funding or team support, we relied on free tools, existing frameworks, and native iOS components to accelerate development and reduce complexity.
Time Constraints: Working on Life during nights and weekends while maintaining full-time jobs necessitated a lean and focused approach to feature development.
Design Adaptations
Leveraging Native iOS Patterns: To simplify implementation, I used native iOS design libraries and patterns, reducing the need for custom-built interactions while maintaining a polished look and feel.
Simplified UX: Prioritized core features like custom tracking, calendar navigation, and data summaries, ensuring they were easy to implement while meeting user needs.
Iterative MVP Approach: Focused on launching an MVP to validate the concept, gathering user feedback to guide subsequent iterations and feature development.
Outcome: Despite these constraints, the app delivered a seamless and engaging experience for millions of users. By aligning design choices with development capabilities, we created a product that was both scalable and impactful, achieving global success without the resources of a large team.
Usability Testing
To ensure Life delivered an intuitive and user-friendly experience, usability testing was a critical part of the design process. This phase focused on validating design decisions, identifying potential pain points, and refining the app based on real user feedback.
Testing Approach
Prototype Testing: Conducted tests with interactive prototypes to evaluate navigation, data entry flows, and overall usability before development.
Target Users: Engaged a small group of users who actively tracked their health to provide relevant and actionable feedback.
Feedback Collection: Observed how users interacted with the app, identifying areas where they hesitated or encountered friction.
Key Findings
Ease of Navigation: Users appreciated the clean and simple layout but suggested minor adjustments to improve the visibility of key actions, such as adding data or navigating the calendar.
Customization Needs: Testing confirmed the importance of customizable health tracking, with users validating the flexibility of tags and categories as a standout feature.
Data Summarization: Users found value in the daily summary feature but suggested clearer visual indicators for important dates, such as ovulation or upcoming cycles.
Iterative Improvements
Adjusted button placement and navigation flows to reduce friction during key interactions.
Refined visual hierarchy to ensure important actions and data were immediately noticeable.
Enhanced the usability of the calendar and horizontal navigation, addressing feedback around clarity and accessibility.
Outcome: Usability testing ensured that Life met user expectations and provided a seamless experience, reinforcing its position as a user-centered health tracking app. By incorporating feedback into iterative updates, the app continually evolved to better serve its growing user base.
Iterations
Life evolved significantly over multiple design iterations, driven by user feedback, usability testing, and the need to adapt to changing market and platform standards. Each iteration focused on refining functionality, improving usability, and enhancing the overall user experience.
Key Iterations
Custom Data Tracking
Initial Approach: Early designs allowed users to create custom tags and categories, addressing the primary market gap.
Refinement: Feedback revealed the need for quick access to frequently used tags, leading to the introduction of shortcuts for faster data entry.
Horizontal Navigation
Introduction: A horizontally scrolling navigation bar was added, allowing users to switch between health categories like Symptoms, Moods, and Weight with ease.
Impact: This reduced friction in accessing features and streamlined the logging process.
Summary Feature
Enhancement: By repositioning the "Add Period" and "Add Ovulation" buttons horizontally, vertical space was freed up to display a daily summary at the bottom of the screen.
User Value: The summary provided users with a quick overview of their day’s logged data, making the experience more informative and actionable.
iOS 7 Redesign
Challenge: Apple’s transition to flat design required adapting Life’s aesthetic to align with the new platform standards.
Solution: Simplified visual elements, adopted thinner fonts, and modernized the overall interface to emphasize clarity and content over decoration.
Final Visual Polishing
Improvements: Introduced calming background images and subtle gradients to enhance emotional resonance and personalization.
Outcome: These changes created a balance between a functional tool and a visually engaging experience, contributing to strong user retention.
Outcome of Iterations: Each iteration strengthened Life’s ability to meet user needs, with improvements directly contributing to its success. By prioritizing user feedback and focusing on iterative refinement, Life delivered a polished and impactful health tracking experience that resonated with millions worldwide.
Final Design
The final design of Life represents the culmination of iterative improvements and a user-centered approach, delivering a health tracking app that is both intuitive and impactful. Every design decision was guided by the goal of empowering users to manage their health effortlessly while creating an engaging and aesthetically pleasing experience.
Key Features
Custom Data Tracking: Users can create and organize custom tags and categories, enabling them to track symptoms, moods, and habits specific to their needs.
Horizontal Navigation: A streamlined top navigation bar allows users to switch between health categories like Symptoms, Moods, and Weight with minimal effort.
Daily Summary: The app includes a summary section at the bottom of the home screen, providing users with a quick overview of their logged data for the day.
Exportable Reports: Users can generate PDF reports to share with healthcare providers, bridging the gap between tracking data and actionable insights.
Visual and Functional Design
Modern Aesthetic: The interface leverages a clean, flat design with calming color palettes and subtle gradients, aligning with iOS guidelines while creating a sense of personalization.
Ease of Use: The app maintains a focus on simplicity, ensuring that key actions like logging data and navigating the calendar are seamless and intuitive.
Scalable Framework: Designed with scalability in mind, the final product was able to support millions of users with minimal technical overhead.
Impact: The final design balanced simplicity, functionality, and user engagement, enabling Life to become a trusted tool for millions of users worldwide. By addressing the market need for personalization and usability, the app achieved widespread adoption and long-term user loyalty, solidifying its position as a leader in health tracking.
This first iteration of Life reflects a visually engaging and simplified design, emphasizing key information while enhancing user experience.
Key Feature: The screen prominently displays the number of days until the user's next expected cycle, along with the specific date, presented in an elegant, minimalistic format. This design prioritizes clarity and immediate access to vital information.
Visual Design: The gradient background introduces a soft, calming aesthetic to foster a sense of personalization and wellness, moving away from overly clinical interfaces common in health apps.
Streamlined Navigation: The bottom navigation bar provides intuitive access to essential app features, such as the home screen, calendar view, analytics, notifications, and settings, ensuring ease of use and logical flow.
By presenting key data prominently and removing unnecessary complexity, this design strengthened user engagement while maintaining simplicity.
The second iteration of Life reflects a significant evolution in both visual design and functionality, creating a more engaging and interactive experience for users.
Dynamic Home Screen (Left): The home screen features a countdown to the next expected cycle, enhanced with a visually stunning background image that fosters a sense of calm and personalization. The integration of a photographic background adds emotional resonance, moving beyond static gradients for a more aspirational aesthetic.
Interactive Calendar (Right): The calendar view introduces a high level of interactivity, allowing users to log essential data, such as the first day of their period, symptoms, and mood, directly from this screen. The design incorporates subtle color cues to highlight key dates, offering users a quick visual reference for their cycles.
Streamlined User Flow: The navigation bar remains consistent, providing seamless access to features like home, calendar, analytics, notifications, and settings. This consistency ensures ease of use while integrating the additional functionality of customizable logs.
This iteration combines aesthetic refinement with improved usability, aligning the app more closely with user needs and preferences. By making data entry intuitive and enhancing the visual appeal, Life continues to prioritize user engagement and satisfaction.
The shift from iOS 6 to iOS 7 marked a pivotal evolution for Life, as the design adapted to Apple’s new flat design guidelines and emphasis on clarity and functionality. The comparison between the iOS 6 (right) and iOS 7 (left) iterations highlights the app’s ability to evolve while maintaining a strong focus on usability.
iOS 6 Design (Right)
Features skeuomorphic elements, such as 3D effects and textured details, which align with Apple’s design language at the time.
Includes bold gradients and button-like interactions, providing a sense of depth.
While visually rich, it leans on decorative elements that can sometimes overshadow the core functionality.
iOS 7 Design (Left)
Embraces Apple’s flat design principles with a clean, minimalist aesthetic. Heavy textures and gradients were replaced with subtle, informational design, focusing on content rather than decoration.
Typography is modernized with thinner fonts, enhancing readability and aligning with iOS 7’s visual language.
The calendar view remains consistent in structure but incorporates softer colors and simplified elements, ensuring a seamless user experience while feeling current with the updated OS.
Design Adaptation: Transitioning to iOS 7 required rethinking visual priorities while retaining functionality. By simplifying visual details and emphasizing information clarity, Life aligned with Apple’s modern design ethos without compromising the user experience that millions of users relied on. This iteration showcased the app’s ability to adapt to major design trends while remaining user-focused.
This iteration (far left) introduced several key improvements aimed at streamlining user interaction and maximizing screen real estate while enhancing functionality.
Horizontal Navigation for Health Categories: A horizontally scrolling navigation bar at the top allows users to quickly switch between health categories such as Symptoms, Moods, Weight, Fertility, and more. This design improvement reduces the need for deeper menu navigation, saving users time and effort when logging or reviewing data.
Horizontal Action Buttons: The "Add Period" and "Add Ovulation" buttons were repositioned horizontally, freeing up vertical space on the screen. This layout not only feels more intuitive but also aligns with the horizontal navigation for consistency in interaction patterns.
Daily Summary Section: The saved real estate was utilized to introduce a summary of the day’s logged events at the bottom of the screen. This section allows users to quickly review their entries, such as symptoms and notes, ensuring all key information is visible at a glance.
These changes reflect a deep understanding of user behavior and the importance of balancing functionality with visual clarity. By reducing friction in navigation and introducing a summary view, this iteration made it even easier for users to engage with their data, reinforcing Life’s commitment to user empowerment.
The final design of Life represents the culmination of iterative enhancements and user-centered decisions, balancing functionality, content, and aesthetics to deliver an intuitive and empowering experience.
Focus on Functionality: The design prioritizes key features like the countdown to the next period, an interactive calendar, and an integrated journal for tracking moods, symptoms, weight, and nutrition. These tools empower users to log and review their health data effortlessly, meeting the app’s core mission of personalization and ease of use.
Streamlined UX/UI: The interface embraces a clean, modern aesthetic, using a dark theme with vibrant accent colors to create visual contrast and enhance readability. The horizontal category navigation and summary views allow users to access critical data with minimal effort, ensuring a seamless and intuitive user experience.
Overcoming Constraints: Despite the challenges of a small team and limited resources, the design leverages smart use of existing iOS patterns, careful space management, and efficient navigation to deliver a polished and professional product.
Recognition and Impact: The final iteration solidified Life’s position as the #1 Period Tracker on the App Store, celebrated for its simplicity, functionality, and ability to empower users with meaningful health insights.
The final design not only reflects an evolution in the app’s capabilities but also highlights a deep understanding of user needs, cementing Life as a trusted tool for millions of people worldwide.
Life’s success was tracked through a comprehensive set of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that demonstrated the app's ability to engage users, deliver value, and achieve significant market impact. These metrics allowed us to measure growth, user satisfaction, and overall business performance.
Downloads: Over 22 million global downloads, reflecting strong organic adoption and user demand.
Daily Active Users (DAU): Consistently engaged 500,000 users daily, showcasing the app’s relevance in users’ lives.
Monthly Active Users (MAU): Maintained 2 million monthly active users, emphasizing the app’s retention power.
Stickiness (% DAU/MAU): A high stickiness percentage highlighted user loyalty and frequent engagement.
App Store Impressions and Ranking: Achieved top 5 Health App rankings in over 80 countries, with significant visibility across the App Store.
App Store Reviews: A 4.8-star average rating underscored user satisfaction and the app’s ability to meet user needs.
Retention: Strong retention metrics demonstrated Life’s ability to maintain long-term user relationships.
Revenue/Proceeds: Generated $4 million in total sales, with no marketing spend, driven entirely by word-of-mouth and organic growth.
User Support: Minimal support required (2 daily emails on average), reflecting a seamless and intuitive user experience.
These metrics not only highlight the app’s commercial success but also its ability to deliver a valuable, user-centered experience that resonated with millions worldwide. Life’s data-driven approach to improvement ensured ongoing user satisfaction and market leadership.
Life achieved significant milestones in the health and fitness app market, standing out as a user-focused tool with meaningful impact. These achievements reflect the app’s growth, global reach, and ability to meet user needs effectively:
Top 10 Health & Fitness App in 80+ Countries: Consistently ranked among the best, demonstrating its value to users worldwide.
Localized in 18 Languages: Expanded accessibility and relevance for diverse audiences across the globe.
Over 22 Million Downloads: Achieved steady adoption through organic discovery and user recommendations.
$4 Million in Total Sales: A strong indicator of user engagement and willingness to invest in the app.
500K Daily Active Users: Regular engagement highlights the app’s role as an essential part of users’ routines.
2.1 Million Monthly Active Users: Sustained retention emphasizes the app’s long-term value to its audience.
100% Organic Growth: Grew entirely through word-of-mouth and user satisfaction, with no marketing spend.
Minimal Support Needed: Intuitive design and reliable functionality minimized the need for support, even with a large user base.
These successes underscore Life’s ability to address real user needs while maintaining a strong presence in a competitive market. By focusing on functionality and accessibility, the app became a valuable tool for millions.
Life achieved a significant milestone by ranking as the #13 Top Free App on the US App Store, demonstrating its broad appeal and strong user engagement.
Ranked higher than Facebook Messenger, showcasing the app’s ability to capture attention in a highly competitive market.
Just two spots away from Instagram, further emphasizing Life’s relevance and popularity among a global audience.
This achievement reflects the app’s ability to deliver value to users, outperforming established brands in the App Store rankings without any marketing spend. Life’s presence in the Top 15 underscores its success in meeting user needs and maintaining a competitive edge in a crowded space.
By 2018, Life had grown beyond our ability to manage and maintain it effectively as a two-person team. The app’s rapid growth, with millions of active users and global adoption, presented challenges in scaling operations to meet increasing demands.
Recognizing the potential for further growth under a larger team, we accepted an acquisition offer from Bending Spoons, a leading app development company known for their expertise in scaling and evolving mobile applications. The acquisition ensured that Life would continue to thrive under their stewardship, reaching even more users worldwide.
Life was growing faster than our capacity to sustain it.
Bending Spoons offered a fair and reasonable price for the app.
The app was officially sold in 2018, marking the beginning of its next chapter.
This acquisition highlights the success and value Life brought to the market, ensuring its legacy as a user-focused health app with global impact. It also marked a proud milestone in our journey, as we saw the app we created evolve into something even greater.
