‘The World’s Most Satisfying Checkbox’

Speaking of ADA winner Andy Allen and (Not Boring) Habits:

How’d we do it? Rather than hide the screws, I’d like to pull our app apart and show you how the pieces come together. Let me strip off the sugarcoating and share a little secret about habit tracker apps: they’re little more than a glorified checkbox. The interaction is simple: every day you open the app and hit the checkbox to record a completed habit. [...]

In trying to get a particularly tricky habit to stick, I tried dozens of apps and nothing worked for me. Recording an action felt like yet another chore. None could approach the most basic satisfaction of simply crossing out an item on a list.

Could you design a simple action that felt as satisfying and infuse it with as much symbolism? Were we about to redesign the checkbox?

I think you know where this is headed.

I can’t say enough good things about the Not Boring suite of apps — both what they’re trying to do and how well they accomplish those goals. All fashion is cyclical, and the return of depth of texture to UI design is inevitable. The Not Boring suite is trailblazing one particularly opinionated path forward.

★ Wednesday, 15 June 2022