RIPPLE
Spreading Positivity Through Gratitude & Kindness
ROLE
UX/UI Designer
TEAM
just me :)
TIMELINE
One semester
PLATFORM
Mobile + Desktop
Overview
Most journaling apps stop at reflection.
You write something down, close the app, and nothing changes.
But reflection has potential.
What if it could lead to action?
What if small moments of awareness could ripple outward — affecting not just you, but others?
Ripple is an app that helps users build small daily habits around reflection, gratitude, and kindness. It connects journaling with simple actions, turning everyday moments into something more intentional.
The Problem
People journal but insights stay internal
Existing tools support reflection, but often stop there. Journaling and wellness apps help users understand how they feel, yet that awareness rarely carries into daily life.
This creates a gap between reflection and action. Where meaningful insights don’t translate into small, intentional behaviors, making the experience harder to sustain over time.
The root problem: There is no system that connects personal reflection to meaningful real-world action.
Why It Matters
Reflection has the potential to shape behavior, but without a way to act on it, that potential is lost. When insights don’t translate into action, they fade quickly and are harder to sustain over time.
Small, intentional actions, like checking in on someone or expressing gratitude, can have a meaningful impact, both personally and socially. But without guidance or visibility, these moments are often missed.
Solution
Ripple bridges the gap between reflection and action by connecting journaling, insight, and small acts of kindness into one continuous experience. Instead of treating reflection as an isolated activity, the app helps users understand their emotions and take simple, meaningful actions based on them. Turning everyday moments into something more intentional and impactful.
The system
Ripple is built around a continuous loop that connects reflection to real-world impact:
Reflection
The user writes about their day or responds to a prompt
Insight
The system identifies patterns or highlights meaning
Action
A small, relevant action is suggested
Impact
The action creates a visible or emotional result
Reflection
That experience feeds into the next moment of reflection
Principle
Awareness
Reflection
Direction
Action
Ripple Effect
Definition
Journaling captures raw thoughts and emotions, turning everyday moments into meaningful input.
The system acts as a mirror, helping users better understand patterns in how they feel and think.
Insights translate reflection into clear, simple guidance for what to do next.
Small acts of kindness turn internal awareness into real-world behavior.
Actions extend beyond the individual, creating visible impact through community and shared experiences.
Core Concept
From Awareness to Ripple Effect, 5 design principles
Feature matrix shows side-by-side which pillars each app covers. The "outward action" column is completely empty for all four competitors — that's Ripple's uncontested lane.
App
Emotional Depth
Journaling
Gratitude
Action
Stats/
Insights
Meditation Tools
Social
Layer
Color Wheel
Q&A
Patterns
Tools tab
Cheack-ins
Progress
Core product
Simple moods
Notes+ photo
Prompted
Core product
Premium gated
Mood after entry
Circles/ family
Looking at the matrix, the single most striking pattern is that not one competitor connects inward reflection to outward action. Every app is essentially a mirror, you look at yourself, track yourself, understand yourself, and then closes. Nobody asks "now what do you do with this?"
self-awareness
emotion depth, meditation, stats
The most interesting absence is the combination of gratitude + stats. Gratitude Plus, which is literally named for gratitude, has no stats page. That means people who journal gratitude have no way of seeing patterns over time. What they're consistently grateful for, who shows up most, what contexts bring it out. That's a gap with real emotional resonance that Ripple could fill.
Overview
Yael is a creative, self-aware young professional navigating the balance between work, social life, and personal growth. She journals in the morning, goes to yoga twice a week, and volunteers occasionally. She cares deeply about emotional wellbeing, both her own and others', and is drawn to meaningful, intentional habits.
Needs
A habit-building tool that actually sticks
Reflection that leads somewhere, not just inward
A sense of community without oversharing
Quick, uplifting experiences that fit into her day
Yael Kadar
24 Years old | Graphic Designer | Tel Aviv, Israel
Context
Active on social media but growing more mindful about screen time. Listens to mindfulness podcasts. Craves connection and impact but finds most wellness apps either too broad or too isolating. Shes tried journaling and donation platforms but nothing has felt emotionally fulfilling or consistent.
Pain Points
Generic apps feel impersonal
Donation platforms feel transactional, not meaningful
Random prompts don't build a real habit
Most apps are too isolating or uncomfortably public
habit/journaling
Writing, documenting, consistency
-Present
-Partial
-Absent
Competitive Landscape
Analysis of How We Feel, Headspace, DailyBean & Gratitude Plus
Persona
Who is Ripple for?
To design Ripple with intention, we needed to understand the people it's built for. The persona below represents our primary user: someone who already values reflection and kindness, but hasn't found a tool that turns those values into a consistent, meaningful habit.
Design
Early Exploration
Home Screen
The journal prompt went from "How are you?" to "Hi Yael, how was the meeting?" the app pays attention. The entry point became an ambient card, so you're already journaling without an extra tap.
The stats row didn't exist in the wireframe at all. Adding streak, impact, and friends rippled makes Ripple's core value visible the moment you open the app. The social proof on the kindness card does the same "+116 people did this today" turns a personal nudge into a community moment.
Another upgrade is swapping "quote of the day" for "yesterday's insight." A random quote is passive. Your own words reflected back at you is what makes you return.
Journal screen
The biggest shift in the journal screen is philosophical. The wireframe treated journaling as a form to fill in, the final design treats it as a conversation.
The wireframe opened with "First, let's talk emotions" and presented a row of emotion bubbles to pick from. It was structured, step-by-step, almost clinical. The final design skips the picker entirely and just asks "Hi Yael, how was the meeting?" no categories, no steps, just a question that trusts you to answer in your own words.
Final Design
Mobile
Desktop
Reflection
To strengthen reflection, I introduced a tracker on the home screen below the journal section. It surfaces the user’s journal streak, positive impact from completed kindness challenges, and moments where others have “rippled” them through mentions.
Kindness Challenge
The Kindness Challenge suggests simple, daily actions that encourage users to turn reflection into small acts of kindness.
Journal+ Insight
The journal gives you a daily personalised prompt, type or speak your response in under a minute. What makes it different is what happens after: Ripple reads patterns across your entries over time and reflects them back as insights. You're not just recording how you felt, you're slowly discovering what actually matters to you.
Community
The community is where kindness extends beyond the individual. Users can share journal moments, document acts of kindness, and tag friends they want to thank, creating a space that highlights and celebrates small, everyday actions. Premium users can also take part in global kindness challenges, connecting personal actions to a larger impact.
Meditation + Sounds
The Sound & Mood section offers simple tools to help users regulate their emotions in the moment. Users can do a quick breathing exercise, listen to calming music while working, or choose short audio experiences that support focus, relaxation, or rest.
Premium
The premium tier deepens the experience by offering advanced insights, richer journaling tools, and access to global kindness challenges. It allows users to better understand their patterns, express themselves more fully, and connect their actions to a broader impact.
Free Writing
The freewrite journal allows users to switch from guided prompts to an open, unstructured writing space. It creates a simple environment for fully expressing thoughts, with premium users able to enhance entries by adding photos and media.
UI decision
Graphic Inspiration
Design system examples
Impact & success metrics
Ripple is a student project, so it hasn't been tested with real users yet. But defining what success would look like is itself part of the design process. It keeps the product honest about what it's actually trying to change.
If Ripple were to launch, success wouldn't just be measured in downloads. The metrics that would matter most are the ones that reflect genuine habit formation and outward impact: are users returning daily, are they completing kindness actions, and most importantly, are those actions reaching other people?
We'd look at:
Streak retention
Are users still journaling after 7 and 30 days?
Target: 40% at day 30
Kindness Completion
Do people log the daily ripple, or just read and move on?
Target: 50% Completion rate
Friends Rippled
Is the outward action actually happening, or staying internal?
Target: 1+ per week per user
Insight Engagement
Do users read past insights, and does it bring them back?
Target: 60% open rate
Qualitative feedback
Do users feel more connected, intentional, and positive?
Target: 70% positive sentiment
Summary & Takeaway
What started as a logistics-heavy system quickly revealed a more human story. Beyond schedules and data, the project highlighted the people behind the system, and the importance of designing with that perspective.
Moving forward, the next steps would include expanding the system across all user roles and conducting deeper usability and accessibility testing to refine the experience.