Project Story: Habit & Interaction Companion

About the Project

The project is a Habit & Interaction Companion—an app designed to tackle loneliness, encourage healthy habits, and support personal growth through guided routines and social interaction. Users can form new habits, track progress, and optionally interact with coaches or peers to sustain accountability.

Inspiration

The idea came from observing that people often know the “right” path (like exercising, learning, or journaling) but struggle with consistency. Many productivity or habit apps exist, but loneliness and habit fatigue remain unsolved. We aimed to combine habit formation with social interaction and subtle gamification to increase engagement and motivation.

What I Learned

User psychology matters: Engagement is as much about emotional reinforcement as tracking progress.

Subscription models and monetization: Integrating services like RevenueCat helps manage cross-platform subscriptions efficiently.

Full-stack integration: Handling frontend, backend, and analytics taught me the importance of modular architecture.

Iterative design: Testing small features and iterating rapidly helped refine user experience.

How I Built the Project

Frontend: React Native for cross-platform mobile support.

Backend: Firebase for authentication, data storage, and real-time updates.

Subscription & Monetization: RevenueCat to manage in-app purchases, subscriptions, and analytics across iOS and Android.

Data Analytics: Tracks habit completion, streaks, and social interactions.

Gamification: Users earn points and badges for habit consistency.

Workflow:

User signs up and selects habits to track.

Optional coach or peer interaction is activated.

Progress is tracked, displayed via charts, and rewarded.

Premium features (like personalized coaching) are gated via RevenueCat-managed subscriptions.

We also experimented with habit recommendation using simple probability metrics. For example, for each habit ℎ h, we computed a success probability score:

𝑃 ( ℎ

)

completed_days total_days_tracked P(h)= total_days_tracked completed_days ​

This helped users prioritize habits likely to stick.

Challenges Faced

User retention: Ensuring users returned daily required careful UX design.

Cross-platform subscriptions: Handling iOS and Android nuances in RevenueCat was tricky.

Scalability: Real-time data tracking for multiple users initially caused latency.

Balancing gamification and utility: We had to avoid making the app feel like just a “game.”

Conclusion

This project taught me the value of integrating psychology, technology, and monetization in a single product. Building it improved my React Native skills, backend integration knowledge, and understanding of user-centered design.

The project now serves as a proof-of-concept that habit formation apps can be socially engaging, gamified, and monetizable, with clear potential for further expansion.

Built With

• axios
• chart.js
• cloud-functions/aws-lambda
• firebase-(auth
• firestore
• ios
• javascript
• redux
• revenuecat
• storage)
• typescript