3
6 Comments

Show IH: jststrt - a minimal habit tracker

Hi there,

During last year I grew up my sport and exercise practice. I looked up for a habit tracker to monitor all these activities. I didn't need something sophisticated like setting goals and all, I just wanted to get perspective with an overview over the last months to see how regular I am.

As basic as seems my need, I couldn't find anything really fitting it especially in the browser (most of habit tracking app are native for mobiles). I think I had fun building my own system. Now, I don't know what to do with it. I have a couple of friends using it already, but I lack some feedback on the product.

Here: https://jststrt.com/

Would love to get opinions on jststrt, thanx in advance

Arnaud, from France

  1. 2

    Oooh! Competition! Haha joking here :)

    I'll give a tough answer but just because I value your work and effort and want you to improve it. Since I am also working on a habit tracker (https://everydaycheck.com for those who want to follow along) I'll compare it to my product when relevant. Let's grow together!

    1. I want to say that I think you've paid a lot of attention to small details (email templates, initial help, the 'what you should be waiting for' when signing up', the nice footer, etcetera). That's great, but IMO, that should always come after the core idea. However, I must admit it looks like a finished product, so good job.
    2. The biggest issue from my point of view is that you have to do too many clicks for the main action, "mark an habit". Since you have to select a day, click on the habits you want and then update. Obviously, I find my solution much better, since your 3 clicks are just 1 in my app. I really think this is so important I will say that the entire success of the app depends on this. People don't want to have to track their habits, so at least let's make it easy for them! My suggestion here is: change this workflow. My initial thought is, allow a user to "select an habit" on the top menu, and then he can "mark all the days" he wants non-stop. This would greatly reduce the nr of clicks.
    3. The idea of having inverted calendars upwards is kinda great but at the same time I think it doesn't work well, it kind of messes with my head. I need to make an extra effort to "figure out where I am". I think an easy fix would be to maintain the "last week on top" idea, but keeping the order of the weekdays as we are used to, so Monday on the left, and Sunday on the right. (note that for americans this will be even tougher since their weeks start on Sunday). I think this way, you could still have the last days to update on top, while not messing with people's heads.
    4. I'm sorry but I have to say that I think in everydayCheck it's much easier to get an overview of how good you are doing with a habit than here. You end up with a calendar full of colourful dots but it's not so obvious, at least to me. The filters are great though! Also, I know you are not working with the idea of chains, but here it's very hard to follow.
    5. I really like the concept of "just start", since I suffer of analysis paralysis. However, I'm not sure how does the app name "just start" connect with the app itself. How does the app help you just start? I know this is a dumb comment, but, I don't see the connection.
    6. Still taking on the name... jststrt is not easy to google, or even type, I know it's hard to find names, domain names, etc, but if you want to go serious with this app, I think you should reconsider the name.
    7. Try to fix the copywriting issues with english! I'm not a native speaker but I can help you out as good as I can if you need it!

    Btw, I've probably looked at jststrt too much from my everydayCheck point of view so feel free to ignore everything I just said! After all, your goal with the app might not be exactly the same I have! In any case, I think you've done a great job here! And gave me some new ideas and a new point of view of my app :)

    1. 2

      Hi Mezod, thank you very much for all the feedback. Wow, I'm so impressed with your analysis. Honestly I didn't overthink the product and all came out of a quick sketch. I consider it as a side project I do for fun, but also for education purpose as I'd never market any product yet. And I am in the process of learning :)

      I take good note of all of the "marketing" remarks which seems totally valuable to me.

      Considering the number of clicks, I've never thought it this way, and you certainly point something. But if someone is updating the calendar on a daily basis or so, I don't think the number of clicks is too much effort, and it would be hard to believe that it holds the whole success of the app. But I'll definitely consider the issue and experiment something soon.

      Concerning the inverted calendar, you're probably right again, but I played with different solutions and to be honest I didn't find any silver bullet, I just sticked with the one which gave me the smallest headache, lol. For now I got more of a positive feedback about it.

      As you said, jststrt doesn't focus on the idea of streaks, and I disagree on the fact that you have to do something everyday to consider it as an habit. I made the app because I couldn't do it properly with other apps like yours or coach.me. I wanted to track some stuff I only do perhaps twice a month. What I had in mind when I made the app was to be able to get the big picture of my activities (eg: how many times did I bike this month versus last month, etc). But I'm aware everyone is different, and I would be super happy to see people using jststrt in others ways.

      I don't think our products are really competitors. As you said I'm convinced the goal of our app might slightly differ. I don't know how many different habit tracker it exists, but it is a lot. The hard part is to get and explain well the subtlety of each one and how it works. It is far from easy :)

      Thanx again for your comment, the feedback is so much appreciated. I would be happy to send you some about everydaycheck if you will!

      ps: some others examples of habits tracker who seem great (I didn't try them)
      https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/daily-goals-simple-habit-tracker/id590691570
      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.compscieddy.onceaday&hl=en

      1. 2

        Totally fair :)

        I'd love to hear your feedback on everydaycheck but don't feel forced to!

        1. 1

          Hi @mezod, I totally forgot about the feedback. Maybe one day :)

          I thought of you because I heard about this really interesting tracker. http://www.quitwithclips.com/ It's mobile only. Ux seems great, thought you could like it and take inspiration from their "streak" visualization.

  2. 2

    Hi Arnaud, here are a few comments from trying out the site:

    • I did not get the point of the hashtag "#juststart" on the frontpage and found it a bit confusing
    • You should get a native speaker to review the content of the homepage. There are a bunch of grammatical mistakes.
    • I enjoyed the on-boarding. It's very easy to understand.

    Gamification could help make creating the habit more fun. Do you have any gamification elements (like a score)?

    1. 1

      Thanx for the review !

      I don't have any gamification elements for now, I thought of adding a progress bar or something to help onboarding, but I prefer stick to something minimal. I'm afraid it would make the app too complicated if I add a notification system or other layers of functionality. Plus it would add a lot of work for a side project ...

      But I like your point and I will definitely consider adding a score system or something. Handle a whole project on your own is a lot more work I could have imagine. Anyway thank you for your time,I appreciate it so much 💥