A small setting for a pressure I hadn’t noticed I was adding.
Did It is meant to be the opposite of a to-do list. You only record what you’ve already done, there are no streaks, and nothing asks anything of you. I thought I’d been careful about that.
An empty day is where you start. Right from the get-go I wanted this to be a fun, inviting place. There’s a celebratory, meme-inspired character that doubles as a fidget spinner (thanks Arc Mobile for the heavy influence). This is also where I add gentle prompts when updates are available, or links to what’s new, and a nudge if I’m after some feedback. Lightweight, no pressure. So an empty day was meant to feel welcoming.
I heard from a few people that they’d stopped using Did It day to day. Their reason was the same each time. They’d missed some days, and they felt they needed to go back and fill those in before they could carry on with today.
That is exactly the pressure the app exists to remove. And I’d built it in without realising.
Where it came from
The cause was how you move between days. Swipe back from today and you land on yesterday. If yesterday is empty, you’re looking at a blank day, and a blank day looks like something you owe. Nothing in the app said “fill this in”. It didn’t have to.
What I changed
I added a setting called Skip empty days, and turned it on by default. Swiping back now jumps to the closest earlier day that has something on it, so the empty days never appear in the path. The keyboard arrows follow the same rule. If you want every day back in the sequence, you turn the setting off. There’s some extra logic for new users, so a brand new account still behaves sensibly: if there are no earlier entries, swiping back lands on yesterday.
What I took from it
It’s so easy to design, develop, deploy, and even test it as a user, and be convinced all is good. It’s only with real people using your app regularly that deep issues will come to light. It was a wake-up call not to simply trust my own good intentions.