Creating a Fun & Intuitive Journaling Experience

On 12th April 2023, I was presented with the design challenge: "Design a functional and unique Journaling App that reflects your style. Don't hesitate to try out interesting techniques and show your personality in your work" for a design role.

As someone who hasn't maintained a journaling habit in a couple of years due to the constraints of physical journals, I saw an opportunity to create a digital solution.

Through observation and immersion, I identified the frustrations of people seeking a convenient journaling experience to be: the hassle of carrying physical journals, forgetting entries, and limited customization options.

By analyzing competitor apps and user feedback, I discovered some necessary features that were missing in these apps: mood tracking, voice recording, and reminder functionality. With MyJournal, I aimed to address these pain points and make journaling accessible and fun for everyone.

I focused on creating only the screens relevant to my solution making sure the app interface is easy to use, intuitive, and engaging for anyone interested in journaling.

The home screen immediately displays previous entries for quick recall. And at the center of the bottom navigation is an "Add Entry" button encouraging users to continue journaling.

Users can personalize entries with themes, fonts, backgrounds, and emoji for mood tracking. And by tapping on the mic icon, users can enter their entries through voice recording.

The calendar view feature visualizes progress and emotions over time. Users can jump to specific dates or months, and track their emotions over time. They also have the option to view or edit an entry by tapping on "entry preview".

Other features I included are a journal lock and reminder. Because journals can be personal and sensitive, users have the option can protect their journals with a password. And with the reminder feature, users can make journaling a habit.

This project impressed my employer and secured me my UX design position.

Delivering this solution within three days helped improve my problem-solving and rapid prototyping skills.

While I focused on the core features for this design challenge, my next steps remain to create additional pages and expand interaction, carry out user testing and incorporate feedback.