WritingHabit
Empowering authors by leveraging the psychology of habits to help them write more words, connect with a community that will support them, and have fun doing it.
My Role
As both a designer and an author, I experienced firsthand the challenges writers face. Drawing inspiration from Atomic Habits, I defined the product vision, designed the proof of concept, selected the technical architecture, and developed the application.
All UI design leveraged the MUI design system, using predefined components where possible and creating custom ones when necessary. This component-based approach allowed rapid iteration on the design based on user feedback.
I currently manage nearly all aspects of the product — design, development, and community engagement — interacting with users daily to gather feedback, fix issues, and continuously refine the experience.
The Problem
Writers struggle to develop a consistent writing habit. They often lack motivation, struggle with accountability, and find it difficult to track their progress meaningfully. Existing tools focus on word counts but don't address the psychological barriers that prevent writers from building sustainable writing habits.
Many writers also work in isolation without a supportive community, making it even harder to stay motivated and committed to their writing goals.
The Solution
WritingHabit tracks a wide range of writing statistics and compares them against personalized goals, providing frequent, data-driven demonstrations of progress and success. These positive feedback loops trigger dopamine responses that help writers stay motivated and avoid burnout.
The platform also offers multiple collaboration and engagement features:
- Writing sprints (solo or group-based)
- Collaborative writing sessions
- Leaderboards and "closest competitor" matchups to foster friendly competition
- Regular challenges that inspire creativity and reward consistency
Together, these features create a supportive, gamified ecosystem that keeps authors writing — and enjoying the process.
Statistics and Insights
WritingHabit provides comprehensive statistics that help writers understand their habits and progress. The dashboard shows writing streaks, daily averages, best writing times, and productivity trends over time.
These insights help writers identify patterns in their behavior and optimize their writing schedule. The visual representations make progress tangible and motivating.
Leveraging Competition
Competition features transform solo writing into a social, engaging activity. Writers can join competitions with friends or the broader community, comparing progress and encouraging each other.
This gamification element taps into extrinsic motivation while building intrinsic writing habits. The competitive aspect makes writing more fun and helps writers push through difficult periods.
Novel Planning Tools
The planning tool is designed to help authors who want to get more done by having a clear plan before they start. I designed the tool to meet or exceed what's offered in other tools and also increase efficiency.
Authors can create character profiles, settings, tag chapters with a variety of elements, manage files and folders, and see a visual timeline that lets them quickly scan their story to see where key events happen and when characters appear. Plot points let authors build out their outline and they can drag and drop them to move them between chapters as their story evolves.
Content Improvement Tools
WritingHabit is packed with features. The editor includes project-wide search, commenting, word usage tracking, close proximity word repetition detection, and other widgets that motivate writers or help them efficiently do work.
Content Security and Feedback
Authors want to protect their work, but they also want to collaborate. WritingHabit empowers them to invite people and give them different permissions.
Beta reading is also a critical part of the writing process and getting good feedback can be hard, so the configurable beta reader questionnaire allows them to ask targeted questions about each chapter to increase the quality of reader feedback.
The Results
By 2025 — a little over two years after launch — WritingHabit has:
Words written by users
Google Docs add-on installs
Year-over-year growth
Web app users
Minutes of writing time logged
Increased user wordcount
North Star Vision
WritingHabit aspires to be the one tool to rule them all. Covering tools that help with each stage of the writing process: ideation and planning, writing, feedback, and formatting for publication.
Learn More
WritingHabit offers a significant number of features both for end-users and administrators. If you want to learn more, please visit writinghabit.app or contact me.