Marble is a savings app to help you visualise your invisible habits - it's designed to assist you in developing non-consumerist behaviour and in turn; support your long term saving goals.
What is an invisible habit?
An invisible habit is a habit that provides no immediate result or visual cue. Not buying a takeaway, or not buying new clothes, resisting the temptation to buy cigarettes or getting a cab home instead of walking.
Choosing the healthier, better, or more cost effective option does not always provide visual feedback or a reward, thus making these habits harder to stick to over long periods of time.
The idea behind Marble is to assist the user in forming, and sticking to their goals by creating a sensory reward for their 'not doing' of various consumerist habits.
The goal of Marble is to reduce the users consumption, enabling them to save for their future and to help promote a society that is more conscientious about how it spends and uses it's resources.
Here are some reasons, courtesy of author James Clear as to why habit visualisation works so well.
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Visual cues remind you to start a behavior
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Visual cues display your progress on a behavior
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Visual cues can have an additive effect on motivation
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Visual cues can be used to drive short-term and long-term motivation
At the very beginning of this project, we discussed a set of team values to stick to throughout, these were primarily to make sure that everyone is listened to and to make sure we are in understanding of one another as best possible. They are as follows:
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Daily emotional check ins.
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Everyone is listened to and not spoken over.
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Good listening through meetings.
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Maintaining a safe environment to express feelings when needed.
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Daily reflections on what went well and what could be done better. As a team we tried to refine our process whilst learning a new framework; React Native.
We all agreed early in the project we wanted to use new technologies to create our final project.
We decided on React Native as a front end framework to create a cross platform(iOS/Android) mobile application. We had heard a lot about it during our time at Makers and were all very excited to use it to create our app.
We decided on Firebase as a lightweight cloud solution for our back end. We liked the idea of learning as much as possible within the scope of our project, so using an entirely new way of storing data seemed like a fun and challenging way to achieve this goal.
We utilised Lottie to convert the bespoke Jar animation into a JSON file, this is then rendered within React Native. Again, this was a new technology to us.
The audio for the animation was created in Ableton Live and rendered using the Expo AV API within React Native.
Below you can see the various iterations that Marble went through; from early mock ups, the MVP, to the final version.
A list of specifications we feel best meet the core concept of Marble:
As a User
So that I can return to my savings pot
I'd like to be able to log in and out of my Marble account
As a User
So that I can visualise my invisible habits,
I'd like to make an entry to the app.
As a User
So that I can reduce consumerist habits
I'd like to add a marble to my jar
As a User
So that I can access the app's functions
I'd like to see a home screen
As a User
So that I get a visual cue to enhance my habit formation
I'd like to see an animation each time I enter a Marble.
As a User
So that I get an audio cue to enhance my habit formation
I'd like to hear a pleasing sound each time I enter a Marble
As a User
So that I can keep track of my overall progress
I'd like to see the total savings in my jar
As a User
So that I can clear my Marbles history to start afresh
I'd like to be able to empty my jar of all entries and savings.
- Stripe payment system for depositing and withdrawing savings.
- Green charity donation suggestion/Charity API
- Badge system for further rewards.
- A shelf for storing jars for multiple long term goals
Marble was developed by:
- Aniruddh Ojha
- Charlie Davis-Miller
- Christine Chee
- Jai Jalah Kumar
- Maximilian Clarke
- Sol Paek