Swipe Journaling Progress DIARY - Week 1

Feb 21

Recently I’ve started working on a new idea for a prototype journaling app.
The idea being to make an easy-to-use swipe based journaling app with predictive text and prompts to help those who find journaling difficult.

The idea came from my own personal experience. As someone who has multiple Moleskin journals but very few that are full.
I’ve always found it a challenge to keep up the journaling habit.

More recently I’ve been able to stick to the habit a lot more and even more so have been able to fully embrace the benefits of journaling.

To explain more of what these benefits are we can turn to science.
One example was a 2006 study where they had randomly assigned a group to journal 15 minutes a day.
The results had found that this group had a significant decrease in their psychological symptoms. These symptoms are depression, anxiety, and hostility.

My idea is to bring these positive effects to a group of people that find it hard to journal or struggle with the habit.

My focus right now:

I am currently elbow deep in the research phase.
I’m collecting insights and testing the journal apps that currently available.

So far this process has included scrawling through online reviews of the journal apps to see common trends in what users are finding frustrating.

I’m also drawing up some surveys to send out to different user groups. These groups will consider people with accessibility issues. For example one group with cognitive issues that may prevent focus, or physical disabilities that make it hard to write anything down.

Current State

I’ve been working out some ideas for how the app will work on Adobe XD.
I’ve been working with one main flow which is to write a short journal entry.

Main Flow Goal Task:
Write a journal entry that includes: an activity you did today, how you felt about that activity,
Who you spend time with today, how you felt about it and overall how you feel in general.

Swipe Gestures:
There are 6 swipe gestures at this time.

Left Screen Swipe Up - changes current prompt
Left Screen Swipe down- changes current prompt

Right Screen Swipe Up - changed suggested text to a more positive answer
Right Screen Swipe down- changed suggested text to a more negative answer

Swipe left - go back in journal

Swipe right - go forward and submit text

Swipe controls seen in image:
Colour coded for clarity.

Red area: (Up and down swipe) controls the prompt.
Green area: (Up and down swipe)controls word or statement that can be changed to be more or less positive.
Blue area: (left or right) controls going back in the entry or inputting suggested words.