Designing a productivity app specifically for the unique challenges of personal creative work
Product Designer
3 months
Research, Mockups, Prototype
Design Complete
Momentum is a product design concept for helping creatives maintain progress on passion projects alongside their day jobs. Through extensive research and prototyping, I designed a solution that understands personal projects need motivation, not just organization.
Not from losing interest, but from losing momentum
Initial interviews with 24 creative professionals revealed that traditional productivity apps treat passion projects like work tasks, missing the emotional and motivational components crucial to personal creative endeavors.
The core frustrations: Creative energy peaks at different times than work productivity. After 3+ day breaks, it takes 23 minutes average to regain creative flow. And 67% of users underestimate their actual progress, killing motivation.
Through 14-day diary studies with 12 participants, I discovered that passion projects fail when we lose context, not interest. Users needed a system that preserves creative momentum through inevitable breaks.
Users had specific times when creative energy peaked, often different from their productive work hours. Traditional apps couldn't accommodate these natural rhythms.
Survey of 156 creatives revealed that most underestimated their actual progress, leading to demotivation. Linear progress bars didn't reflect the iterative nature of creative work.
Ideas and inspiration captured in notes became "stale" and lost context after 1-2 weeks. Users needed a way to keep inspiration fresh and relevant.
The key insight: passion projects have their own life cycles and rhythms. By building features that support the human experience of creative work—celebrating progress, forgiving breaks, and preserving inspiration—we could help users maintain momentum naturally.
Each project lives in a gradient card that brightens with activity and dims when dormant—creating ambient awareness without guilt.
Work sessions auto-save context (notes, links, mood) making it effortless to resume after breaks. No more "where was I?" moments.
Non-linear progress tracking that values consistency over completion. Shows effort heatmaps and patterns rather than percentage bars.
Quick-capture from any app with AI tagging. Surfaces old ideas when relevant, preventing inspiration decay.
Design Process: Created high-fidelity mockups in Figma with a complete design system including components, color schemes, and interaction patterns. Built an interactive prototype to test core user flows and validate the concept with potential users.
Technical Planning: Architected the app using React Native for cross-platform development. Designed the data model with MongoDB for flexible project schemas. Planned WebSocket implementation for real-time sync and local-first architecture for offline capability. The frontend development is ready to resume once backend infrastructure is in place.
"Finally, an app concept that gets that my novel isn't a sprint—it's a marathon I run on weekends. I can't wait for this to launch!"
— User Testing Participant
Testing Insights: Users reported feeling more motivated to continue projects with the visual progress system. The context preservation feature was rated as the most valuable, with participants saying it would save them 20+ minutes per session.
Development roadmap: Currently strengthening backend engineering skills to implement the server infrastructure and real-time sync capabilities. The design is complete and validated through user testing.
Planned features based on user feedback include accountability partner spaces, desktop companion app, and integrations with creative tools. The goal is to launch an MVP once the technical foundation is solid.