FounderPRODUCTBRAND· Jan 2025 – Feb 2025

Habit Halo

A wearable for habit change without shame

Role: Founder - product strategy, interaction & brand design
Timeline: Jan 2025 – Feb 2025
Status: Exploratory founder concept

Problem

Streaks and hard failure states can make a lapse feel final. People needed support they could return to without judgment.

Approach

Use a wearable ritual, ambient progress, and private check-ins to encourage consistency without punishing setbacks.

Final deliverable

Designed the wearable, app, brand, and prototype, including anonymous support rooms. This remains an exploratory founder concept without production or customer validation.

Evidence · wearable + app prototype: ConceptAn exploratory founder project, not a claim of production usage or customer validation.

Decisions & details

ScopeProduct Strategy, Interaction Design, Mobile Product, Wearable Concept, Brand Identity

Links

Brand deck (PDF) ↗Who is Halo — brand personality (PDF) ↗

Product principles

Supportive, not punitive

Encourage returning after a lapse through supportive language and progress cues without public penalties.

Ambient, not demanding

The wearable and Halo cue one deliberate check-in instead of constant notifications.

Personal, not clinical

Jewelry-like materials and gentle motion make the wearable an object someone would choose to keep close.

Progress without competition

Keep time and milestones visible to the individual and trusted peers without public ranking.

Product process

From tracker mechanics to a coherent daily ritual

The final direction was not predetermined. I moved from familiar habit-tracking patterns toward a system where the object, interaction, progress model, and social layer reinforced the same emotional goal.

Framing01 · Problem
Define the emotional cost of tracking
The design problem was not simply recording behavior. It was helping someone stay engaged when conventional streaks and failure states could make a setback feel final.
Direction02 · Principles
Choose the feeling before the feature set
Supportive, ambient, personal, and non-competitive became filters for deciding what belonged in the product and how prominently it should appear.
Exploration03 · Interaction
Turn a log entry into a ritual
The check-in evolved from a dashboard action into a press-and-hold gesture with a glowing visual state: intentional enough to feel meaningful, but light enough to repeat daily.
System04 · Behavior
Represent more than a streak
Elapsed time, levels, badges, physical milestone stones, and trusted peers broadened progress beyond one fragile number while avoiding public ranking.
Final concept05 · Integration
Make hardware and software one loop
The wearable anchors intention, the app supports reflection and progress, milestones make time tangible, and anonymous rooms add social support without demanding exposure.

Live Demo

Explore the live concept site and interactive product direction.

Website

Open

Exploration - from tracking to ritual

Early streak dashboards put too much emotional weight on one number. A hold gesture and glowing Halo made check-in a deliberate, reassuring action.

Early Habit Halo dashboard exploration with glowing-orb states and a central streak count — Early dashboard - legible at a glance, but too centered on the streak as the definition of progress.

Habit Halo press-and-hold daily check-in interaction — Hold to check in — a deliberate gesture designed to reduce accidental logging and make the daily action feel complete.

Exploration - use atmosphere to lower the pressure

Themed rooms and anonymous characters test a gentler way to name emotions before joining a social space.

Habit Halo Rainforest Room mood check-in with anonymous character selection — Rainforest Room - an anonymous character separates participation from public identity.

Habit Halo Ocean Room mood check-in with ambient visual treatment — Ocean Room - atmosphere changes the emotional entry point without changing the underlying interaction.

System - five touchpoints, one behavioral loop

The wearable cues intention; the app supports reflection. Private progress, physical milestones, and optional rooms encourage returning.

Habit Halo end-to-end mobile flow from onboarding through check-in, progress, and support rooms — End-to-end flow - onboarding, the daily ritual, individual progress, and optional social support are designed as one journey.

Hardest design problem - motivation without shame

Badges stay personal or within trusted groups. Whether these cues still create performance pressure remains the first behavioral risk to test.

Habit Halo personal levels and upcoming milestones screen — Levels - a view of what is ahead, framed as personal progression rather than rank.

Habit Halo personal and friend-group milestone badges — Badges - recognition is limited to the individual and trusted peers instead of a public competition.

Final direction - make the journey legible

Elapsed time, close relationships, and a next step keep progress broader than one day's result.

Final Habit Halo Sober Journey screen with elapsed time, progress, and close friends — Sober Journey - time, progress, and trusted people share one hierarchy so no single metric dominates.

Final Habit Halo contextual group support conversation — Contextual support - conversation stays connected to the journey instead of becoming a separate social feed.

Final direction - support without forced exposure

Anonymous sessions use speaker states and turn timers; asynchronous chat keeps support available between sessions.

Habit Halo anonymous group session with current speaker and turn timer — Group session - speaker state and timing clarify the social contract without revealing identity.

Habit Halo room chat and scheduled group-session controls — Room chat - support can continue asynchronously, and live participation remains optional.

Hardware - make the ritual worth carrying

A jewelry-like form and tactile center cue intention without broadcasting what the wearable represents.

Habit Halo wearable shown as a personal black pendant — Personal object - compact, discreet, and designed to be chosen rather than prescribed.

Detail of the Habit Halo wearable materials, sensor, and tactile center — Interaction detail - material, sensor, and center point give the digital ritual a physical counterpart.

Milestones - let progress accumulate physically

Monthly stones preserve accumulated effort, even after a lapse. Packaging introduces them as an ongoing ritual.

Habit Halo presentation box with wearable and twelve monthly milestone stones — Begin a new cycle - the full year is visible from the start without implying a race to finish.

Habit Halo wearable with interchangeable monthly milestone stones — Interchangeable stones - progress becomes a private, cumulative object rather than a public score.

A shared identity

Soft materials, luminous color, and direct language connect the app, wearable, and packaging.

Carrying system - the identity extends into the everyday ritual around the object.

Brand system - the same visual rules connect the physical and digital experience.

Earlier studies - entering the experience

A brand-led entry - “Your journey to heal” - leads into private participation. The Welcome Room explores a turn-based speaking circle where people can join without exposing their identity.

Habit Halo splash - Your journey to heal — Splash - “Your journey to heal.” Colorful halo objects set the tone before sign-up.

Habit Halo Welcome Room - turn-based anonymous group session — Welcome Room - a turn-based speaking circle; each dot is an anonymous member taking their turn.

Earlier studies - anonymous group support

The original MVP concept explored anonymous, open, and public rooms, with ongoing chat and sessions. These studies show the social structure that informed the later support experience.

Habit Halo MVP - anonymous, open, and public rooms with group view — The MVP - anonymous, open, and public rooms, with the group check-in view.

Packaging worlds

Three unboxing concepts, each with its own mantra and material palette - from the light Milestones kit to a dark, grounded box and a warm tan edition.

Habit Halo Milestones packaging - Honor your journey — Milestones - “Honor your journey.” Light packaging with scattered stones.

Habit Halo packaging - Make progress. Not perfection. — “Make progress. Not perfection.” Dark packaging with the full stone set.

Habit Halo packaging - Live with intention — “Live with intention.” Warm tan packaging edition.

Strength & Structure - 2025 brand posters for the Milestones collection.

Habit Halo Milestones 2025 - materials and milestone icons — Milestones 2025 - material studies and the milestone icon set.

Brand personality

Before the product, a question: who is Halo? A run of personas - the rock star on a bender, the DJ at 2 AM, the starving artist in pain - that resolve into a quieter answer: Halo is a lot like you and me, and it stays.

Who is Halo - the full brand personality deck. Open PDF ↗

The original pitch

The original deck framed Halo as a design-first, emotionally grounded support network for sobriety and mental wellness. These slides preserve that ambition; they are concept positioning, not validated health outcomes.

Halo deck - a support network for sobriety and mental wellness — A support network for sobriety and mental wellness.

Halo deck - a design-first, emotionally grounded support system — The solution: a design-first, emotionally grounded support system.

Reflection

What I’m proud of: one emotional language across object and interface

The strongest part of Habit Halo is not a single screen or render. It is the coherence between the wearable, the check-in gesture, the progress model, the social boundaries, and the brand. Each decision supports the same promise: help someone return without making them feel watched or judged.

Test repeated use

Run a longitudinal prototype study to learn whether the hold gesture and ambient feedback still feel supportive after weeks, including after a missed day.

Test progress comprehension

Compare the current model with reduced-streak alternatives to see whether people understand momentum without treating continuity as a pass-or-fail score.

Test attachment and boundaries

Learn whether the wearable creates meaningful ritual, and which anonymous or trusted-group interactions feel helpful rather than intrusive.

Habit Halo is an exploratory founder concept. It has not been validated through production usage, customer metrics, or longitudinal research; these tests define the next product phase.

Let’s talk about your team.

Email me ↗Résumé (PDF) ↗