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Mobile & Consumer

Habit-forming productivity app

A personalization engine and mobile design system powering over one million daily rituals for a VC-backed startup.

Mobile
Toronto, Canada
  • Brand & product design
  • Mobile engineering
  • Personalization models
  • Growth experimentation
1M+Daily active users
+19%Retention lift
2× fasterFeature velocity
Habit-forming productivity app
Headline impact1M+Daily active users
Toronto, Canada

Overview

Habit partnered with Adex to accelerate their roadmap ahead of Series B. We crafted a new brand identity, modular mobile design system, and personalization engine that adapts to each user’s motivation style.

Challenge

Retention lagged as Habit expanded to mainstream audiences. The existing UI felt generic, and the team struggled to prioritize features without clearer signals on what motivated different cohorts.

Partnership snapshot

  • Brand & product design
  • Mobile engineering
  • Personalization models
  • Growth experimentation

What we built

  • Designed a new brand identity and design system that balances motivational energy with calming routines across light and dark modes.
  • Implemented a personalization engine that clusters users by motivation archetype and dynamically adjusts streaks, rewards, and copy tone.
  • Refactored the mobile app with shared Kotlin Multiplatform modules, unlocking faster experimentation across iOS and Android.
  • Set up growth experimentation rituals, instrumentation, and dashboards so PMs could self-serve insights weekly.

Impact

  • Daily active users crossed one million with a 19% lift in 90-day retention.
  • Users engaging with personalized routines completed 2.3× more habits per week on average.
  • Feature velocity doubled thanks to reusable modules and a single source of truth design system.

Key metrics

Measuring outcomes that move the business forward.

  • +19%

    90-day retention

    Increase in retained users after launch of personalization engine and design refresh.

  • +2.3×

    Habit completion rate

    Users exposed to adaptive routines completed over twice as many weekly habits.

  • 2×

    Feature delivery speed

    Measured by story points shipped per sprint after introducing shared modules.

Delivery timeline

A cadence designed to ship momentum every sprint.

Embedded squads pair strategy, design, and engineering to keep decisions tight and learning loops active from the first week.

  1. 1

    Brand foundations

    Weeks 1-4

    Co-created the new identity, motion language, and auditory cues to elevate the mobile experience.

  2. 2

    System design

    Weeks 5-8

    Crafted a cross-platform design system and migrated core flows with component documentation and theme tokens.

  3. 3

    Personalization engine

    Weeks 9-16

    Built and trained models to predict motivation archetypes, integrated with real-time feature flags.

  4. 4

    Growth & measurement

    Weeks 17-22

    Launched experimentation rituals, dashboards, and weekly growth labs to keep the team shipping.

“Adex elevated our product and how our team works. We shipped faster, learned faster, and built a brand people love engaging with every day.”
Priya PatelCo-founder & COO, Habit

Partner with Adex

Let’s explore what’s next together.

Share your roadmap and we’ll map a co-creation path tailored to your team’s ambition, pace, and constraints.

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