App
Pie
Personal Project
Summary
Using goal-tracking apps can often feel like a chore due to their tedious inputting progress, and also lack visualisation to help the user see their progress. My goal was to create an activity tracker for "lazy people" like myself, something is fast, simple, and insightful whilst being unique from the existing solutions.
Introducing Pie
Pie is your daily activity logger. It represents your day in a circle.
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Social Media
Gaming
Sleep
Work
Study
Flexible Inputs - 3 Types
Start timer
Add precise entry
Add quick entry
Add a Quick Entry
By using the slider option, the user can quickly log multiple activities in one sitting.
OR Start a Timer
Users may want to time their activities in real-time, to monitor themselves as they go.
OR add a Precise/Scheduled Log
This input page provides a variety of ways to add more detailed logs, such as specifying different days, start and end times, durations, or even scheduling weekly activities.
Focusing on data visualisation
Too often, progress trackers sort data into percentages and numbers, which I found limiting, as they don’t show the full picture and can be misleading with missed inputs. For Pie, I focused on visualising logs efficiently, providing clarity and flexibility to interpret their progress in a meaningful way.
Calendar access
This feature enables users to access past, present and future logs (scheduled activities). They can filter activities and see progress accordingly.
Progress page
With Pie's progress page, users can view their time distribution at a glance or dive into insights for specific activities, obtaining quick averages, totals, and identified trends.
In Summary, what has Pie achieved?
I believe Pie's greatest accomplishment is simplifying complex processes into a seamless system. Learning from other apps, Pie:
1. Accelerates activity input with multiple methods tailored to different user needs.
2. Enhances data clarity through effective visualizations, helping users better understand their habits.
3. Features a unique, interactive circle design that makes time tracking fun.
Design Process
The issue with current activity trackers
Through my competitive analysis of activity-tracking apps, I identified both useful features and opportunities for improvement. A recurring issue I found was that inputting activities was time consuming due to the multiple steps. Additionally, the apps lacked clear real-time visualisation of data and often presented many details which could be overwhelming for first time users. ​
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Moving forward, my goals were to optimise the flow of activity logging, and provide clear data visualisations through an intuitive interface.
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Explored apps: Habit, Productive, Daily, Tick Tick, Toggl, ATracker
Highlights, pain points, opoportunities
Notable features
Enabling flexibility: four types of tracking
I identified four activity logging use cases to enhance flexibility: manual logging (retroactive and real-time) and automated logging (scheduled or synced with screen time/calendar), which greatly saves times.
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Different users may have different preferences on how they log data. In use case example 1, the user logs data using a combination of automated logging and manual inputs throughout the day, indicated by the red dots. This method reduces the time of manual entry.
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However, as shown in example 2, some users may prefer logging all activities at the end of the day (this may be due to having unscheduled days). Therefore the app must also support the use case of bulk data entry at once.
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Keeping everything within a fingers reach
A key challenge I had to solve was: How do I create a user flow that allows swift switching between activities and different logging formats within a few taps? I analysed the use cases and the feature needs, as shown in green.
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Use case analysis
Following this, I designed a user flow architecture which enables the user to access all of the necessary features for activity logging (green) within a few taps.
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User flow diagram
Through wireframing and prototyping, I experimented with different button layouts and types to improve user control and accuracy during the input process.
Wireframing, iterating, failed prototypes
I designed a solution that lets you access various input types in just a few taps.
The right-side slider enables quick inputs for multiple activities.
Activity input user flow
User picks activity
Real Time Entry
Fast input entry
Precise Entry
Quick entry Slider
Design of the pie
The pie features a 24-hour clock face. While this layout may feel unfamiliar at first, it proved the most compact and intuitive design. The center represents the activity and time, updating dynamically as the user adds entries (especially useful with the slider )
Pie design
End of day
Start of day
Expand/Minimise
Activity name (changes with selection)
Start/End time (updates as you slide)
Duration (updates as you slide)
Activity segment (updates as you slide)
Design of the progress page
I aimed to design a progress page which enables the user to easily switch through views - days, weeks, months, and provide both quantative insights (graphs) and qualitative insights (worded highlights) for the specific activity pages.​
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A key challenge was providing insight into activity patterns—beyond mere quantity—such as the times of day, drawing inspiration from apps such as Apple’s Screen Time.
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Precedent analysis