The brief
This was a course project, not client work, built with two other designers. An NGO presented several health and habit problems for teams to choose from, and we picked phone usage. The idea became an iOS app that blocks selected apps for a set period, aimed at people who wanted to cut down their screen time but had no way to track whether it was actually working.
The research
We ran the research together as a team. Seventy-three percent of the people we surveyed used no tool at all to monitor their habits, and ninety-five percent said they’d actually stick to a habit if they could track it. Most usage happened in the evening, which is why the interface leaned into amber and orange tones, the same logic phones already use to reduce blue light before bed. I owned the UI specifically, while research and the overall product structure were built together as a group.
The product
The product came down to three parts: Onboarding to set things up, a Blocker to restrict access during a chosen window, and an Intervention that asked users to pause and reflect before opening a blocked app instead of stopping them outright. The goal was never to punish the user, it was to motivate less device use while keeping them in control of that choice.
Testing
We tested the MVP afterward with five users. They found the Blocker genuinely helpful, since it kept them in control and accountable for their own usage rather than enforcing a hard rule. The statistics showing app usage per day, week, and month stood out as especially useful, giving people a clear picture of the habit they were trying to change. If I built it again, I’d let users group apps together and set rules per group, rather than blocking each app individually.