Approach

As we worked on the app, our ambition kept expanding. Understanding why people struggle to maintain their commitment is a multifaceted question, and various techniques are recommended to address this issue. introspection, visualisation, storytelling, planning, habits, gamification, to-do lists, etc. We distilled all the knowledge collected from the interviews and research into what seemed to us the most essential. Intention was to keep Staire user-friendly, while conveniently offering access to multiple tools in one place.

We narrowed it down to a focusing section, weekly and daily planning sections, morning and evening routines, auto-feedback sessions, and history of actions.

Visual identity

The name Staire comes from the combination of words stair and stare – former referring to a series of steps that lead from one level to another, the latter referring to a fixed and intense gaze. It's this combination of leveling up and intense focus that most resonated with what we were going for.

Logo contains blocks/steps, but also alludes to apothecary cross with all it's various cultural connotations – trust, healing, connection to nature, the spirit of exploration and the pursuit of knowledge and new experiences.

User interface

We opted for a perpetual dark mode accompanied by energetic neon green highlights to create a more somber and focused atmosphere. The only deviation is during the morning and evening auto-feedback sessions, which we refer to as "Loading" and "Offloading." These sessions feature a color scheme inspired by sunrise and sunset, with cloud-shaped outlines symbolizing the dreams we pursue. This alternate palette was intended to connect with the narrative gamified aspect of Staire, although we had to cut it out of the MVP due to heavy workload.

Outcome

We launched the MVP to a hundred test users on iOS and Android. Although they weren't our precise target audience, the 0% user retention after 8 weeks showed us that we missed the ball with Staire. It seems that in our pursuit to provide an all-encompassing solution dedicated solely to one's biggest goal, we made a crucial mistake. We developed a solution with a lot of codependent parts, without ensuring that each part individually provides the best possible solution to its intended problem.

Throughout the development of the MVP, we kept removing functionalities and narrowing the scope, and still – because we started from an idea of an all-encompassing solution – the MVP was too complicated. With so many moving parts, it was hard to get feedback on which part of the puzzle was the biggest deterrent to usage. Either we made the interplay between Weekly Goals and Daily Actions too complicated, or just the whole concept of requiring a special place dedicated to your biggest life's goal was fundamentally flawed. We still don't know because getting honest feedback of quality proved elusive.

Due to limited resources, including having only one designer and product leader (myself), one part-time developer (Mladen), and no funding, we made the decision to halt the development. Fixing the situation would basically mean starting from scratch and focusing solely on a specific aspect of the solution that none of our competitors provided. Considering this was before the availability of ChatGPT and Copilot, the workload appeared excessively demanding for our small team of two, particularly in the development area.

What I learned

Even after following all the advice on running lean and creating the MVP, and narrowing the scope to what we believed was the minimum functionality necessary to distinguish ourselves from the competition, our solution might still be overly complex. We really needed to begin with the individual building blocks, develop in public and test out each step individually.

I of course learned many lessons that you can only learn from running a startup project with a small team and a barely existing budget. We extensively interviewed dozens of people and compiled meticulously researched documents spanning hundreds of pages. All of that will not go to waste. What I learned will enable me to attack the issue again from different angles, because we have too many interesting ideas not to try them out in the prototype form.

The next step is to gain a solid understanding of coding, which now seems well within my reach with the aid of modern AI tools. With me as an additional developer who could at least capably code the frontend, we can do many smaller tests in public and put all the collected learnings and ideas to the test from a fresh perspective.