Personal development has become a mainstream cultural priority, yet many struggle to maintain consistency with their self-improvement goals. While most productivity tools organize tasks effectively, they fail to address the emotional and psychological barriers that typically derail progress. Many busy adults lose momentum when juggling life's demands with personal development and will often shelve their goals to avoid burnout, caught between aspirational ambitions and practical limitations.
Gol solves this problem by providing motivational support to users as they plan big goals so they can actually achieve them without the stress.
Designer
Fall 2024
UI / UX
Research
Prototyping
01 - Interviews
To gain a deeper understanding of this problem space, I started by remotely interviewing 4 millennial-aged people working full-time to learn how they approached learning new skills and setting goals. I explored how these pursuits fit into their schedules, what obstacles they face, and what might help them stay motivated to achieve their goals.
02 - Finding the problem
I sorted through 150+ data points from these interview sessions, after which it became clear that my participants already had defined learning goals but struggled to find time for them- especially after draining workdays.
I found participants tend to…
The problem-
03 - Who is this for?
To understand this problem deeply, I created a persona of someone directly experiencing these challenges.
Through interviews I learned my participants had some task management systems in place but still felt overwhelmed by big goals amid daily responsibilities. A product addressing goal-planning and the associated mental/emotional toll would provide a simple yet powerful solution to this common problem.
04 - Learning from the competition
To familiarize myself with the current offering in the task-management space. I conducted a competitive analysis of 3 products- Marvin, TickTick, and Todoist. Key strengths and areas of improvement stood out among each.
05 - Organizing content
In addition to finding ways to support the emotional and mental roadblocks that could chip away at one's motivation, I also wanted to give users a way to plan and organize their goals that made achieving goals feel feasible and less overwhelming. After reading up on psychology-based methodology around goal-setting, I decided to pursue a framework of breaking goals into smaller steps to encourage consistent action.
Using findings from a hybrid card sort around task-management topics, I drafted a sitemap and user flows. Below, a before-and-after comparison of my sitemap's evolution. I initially planned three navigational levels but after referencing competitor patterns and considering my busy, overwhelmed target users, I switched to a flat navigation providing straightforward access to all pages.
06 - Shaping Gol
During the sketching phase, I focused on pages users would see when creating a new goal and browsing the Motivation media library.
07 - Painting the picture
I developed a custom component, color, and typography system to streamline the design process and maintain visual consistency throughout the experience. The interface draws inspiration from modernist and mid-century design principles, creating a clean, sophisticated aesthetic.
The color palette centers on neutral tones, punctuated by carefully chosen orange and blue accents that bring warmth and approachability to the interface. Thoughtful typography choices prioritize readability and accessibility standards. Every design decision was made with the goal of creating a sense of mental clarity and breathing room for users.
08 - Branding
The Gol logo visualizes goal achievement through nested elements: the outer diamond represents the overall goal, the inner ring symbolizes milestones, and the center dot represents individual tasks. The pointed top corner reflects the user's upward progress as they complete each level of their journey.
Neutral 900
#353433
Neutral 500
#B5B1B1
Neutral 200
#F7F4F4
Orange 700
#A1280D
Orange 500
#F86341
Orange 300
#FFCBC0
Blue 800
#194E7D
Blue 600
#2580CF
Blue 300
#DEEDFA
09 - High fidelity exploration
With solid visual guidelines, I worked to bring wireframes to life. Initial iterations felt messy and unpolished, however through experimentation I landed on a design that had personality without feeling cluttered.
10 - Testing
To validate design decisions up to this point, I conducted remote usability testing with 5 participants. The objectives:
Understand which specific elements make it easy vs difficult for the user to enter and edit a goal
Determine if users understand current terminology of Goals/Milestones/Tasks and the intended hierarchical relationship between them
Validate whether or not the current “Add a Goal” feature flow fits into users’ mental models of other task management products
The flow being tested:
The results:
1 2 - Achieve your goals without the stress
The final responsive MVP offers a simple yet effective space to plan and track goals, with supportive content when users' resolve wavers. Users can go as broad or granular as they like when logging their goals, while a (hypothetical) premium features like Dashboard, Productivity stats, and Reminders support business goals without hiding key functionality behind a paywall.
13 - Hindsight is 20/20
As with any self-directed project, it never feels truly finished. However, looking back there are a few things I would have done differently throughout the process of designing Gol.
1) Conduct user testing in earlier stages of the process to address larger revisions prior to applying visual design
2) Pay attention to even the small details when testing with prototypes, as anything visible to participants can influence results
3) Functionality note: The "custom goal colors" option could better serve the user if instead they were associated with user-dictated "Tags" shown on the sidebar menu, (things like Work, Personal, Health, etc). I'd also give users an option to not assign a color to a goal for total customization control
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