As this is our first newsletter of 2024, we thought it might be fun to take a look at a Holochain app that will help you keep those New Year’s resolutions!
Nick Stebbings has been developing HabitFract for 4 years after starting it as a project during his software engineering course. Initially he used cookies as persistent storage to track his own habits and behaviours. Now, as an experienced Holochain developer, Nick is taking advantage of the stable Beta release to reinvigorate his application with the benefits that a distributed data framework brings.
Taking Atomic Habits by James Clear as an influence, Nick is building an application that allows users to create overarching goals and then refine them down into smaller habits and individual actions to assist successful achievement. New habits are known to be more persistent when formed using micro-goals. HabitFract’s data input model gives users granularity over what they record and the graphical interface visualises hierarchies of those records, from individual actions to broad patterns of behaviour.
As a quick summary HabitFract uses a hierarchy of actions: a ‘Sphere of Action’ allows you to track different areas of your life, an ‘Orbit’ is a repeated action in that Sphere (a habit of some scale - astronomic, atomic or subatomic etc). Orbits can have a positive or negative spin (i.e. be reinforcing or preventative) and a frequency. The consequential ‘Win’ is used to describe a completed life action within the Orbit of a Sphere.
By developing an infinite drill-down or sub-division of the spheres and orbits users can benefit from a higher perspective of their characteristics in-the-round. This systematic view of the data, rendered visually, reveals the patterns of actions that are most effective at achieving the defined goals. It’s a powerful motivator as overall progress can be seen in ways that aren’t readily conceptualised.
The ability to perceive our progress holistically unveils traits that we can use to ‘hack’ our personal style of learning, thinking and working.
HabitFract literally builds a custom mind map of your fractal achievements.
To help users define their objectives there’s no limit to the subdivision of goals or habits a user can record. This allows users to adapt the tracking to suit their own motivational style.
For example; a New Year’s resolution to ‘Complete a 10k run’ can be broken down into a training regime with defined increments and recorded as each element is achieved.
HabitFract is intended to assist with the development of successful habits so marking actions as completed is streamlined within the hApp as they become familiar.
In our run example; building a habit to achieve our goal involves recording the repetitions of walks and runs, average speed, incline, weather, clothing, time etc at a granular level as we begin. Once in the flow of regular exercise, and having seen the impact it’s had on our goal to run 10k, we can easily mark groups of actions ‘completed’ as they become our new, more effective, routines.
Using the infinite hierarchy of actions and habits made possible by HabitFract, users can group their ‘Orbits’ of actions into ‘Spheres’ of behaviour patterns. As users build their unique visual behaviour patterns in the hApp their effect on each other becomes apparent.
Do you want to see if going for a walk really improves your concentration for the rest of the day? Or if your ‘breakfast-of-champions’ actually affects your stamina and average speed?
HabitFract will provide the evidence as your data is correlated over time and each recorded action affects the data modelling of the other behaviours being tracked. These ‘cornerstone’ habits are the ones that, when completed at any level, affect the others and result in a higher win rate overall.
Helpful UX prompts and considered colour schemes are being incorporated to assist with learning and using the application while gamification is being employed to help users stay engaged and achieve their goals.
HabitFract is being built using the Holochain framework so the visualisations, calculations and data are all held securely on your DHT. Feeling empowered to record real actions, rather than the artificial ‘best-of-us’ most commonly shared on fitness tracking apps and social media will help users to define their genuinely most productive patterns. Using the data sovereignty made possible by Holochain, Nick envisages functionality that includes the ability to share subsets of personal data to public or gated (private group) networks.
Since mimicking successful behaviour has been a key to human advancement, HabitFract can help us to learn from each other’s most constructive patterns. Collaborative habit sharing opens the possibility of interesting social motivators; having visibility of our shared successes and failures can build supportive communities and accountability.
If we can see the data of someone else who has also missed an element of their training, but still completed their 10k run goal, it helps to demystify their success and make our common goals achievable.
For those who want to share their data, a marketplace is envisaged where users could trade NFTs of their successful behaviour patterns. This turns the income models of the current social media platforms, fitness, health and habit trackers on their head.
HabitFract users will have control of what data is recorded, as well as where and with whom it’s shared.
Change the goal from running 10k to starting a business and we can start to learn genuinely effective entrepreneurial habits from each other. As the marketplace of effective behaviours grows common habits will become apparent and users will find a broader choice to match their needs, characteristics and goals.
If you’d like to play with an early version of HabitFract to see some of the visualisations for yourself take a look at the Web2 demo. Please note it’s a retired development branch so it has bugs, refreshing the app may solve some of the rendering issues you encounter.
The Holochain version is currently in development and Nick foresees users accessing it with their most habitually used devices.. smartphones. The idea of using a computer to log habits and achievements as they’re completed doesn’t strike him as user-friendly. So, with mobile in mind, Nick is intentionally building HabitFract to be hosted on Holo! The desktop MVP version is due to be released in February, we’ll share links when it’s ready!
If you’d like to get involved with building HabitFract Nick is looking for volunteers in the following areas:
UI designers and testers.
Frontend developers who want to learn how to make Holochain apps. Nick has built the code repository to use React and GraphQL.
Backend Rust and Holochain Devs who feel motivated to contribute while refining their skills. Nick is a core Dev at Neighbourhoods so has considerable experience to share.
You can get in touch with Nick, to share feedback from the Web2 demo or collaborate, via his email or through the contact form on his website!
Useful Links:
Landing page: https://habfract.github.io/index.html
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/habit-fract
Github: https://github.com/HabFract/
Web2 Demo: https://habfract.online
Design history: https://www.figma.com/file/m8CE7oXUuSw2BGkS7fdvBD/Habfract-Holochain-1.1-Design-System?node-id=214%3A2091&mode=dev
Portfolio: https://nickstebbings.com
🌟 Latest News from hAppenings.community
Join our Discord Server! If you want to be part of our hAppenings community, come join us! You can visit as someone who is Curious, or have more options to interact and get deeper information by deciding to be an Advocate for Holochain projects! hApp Creators are also super welcome!!! Come check us out!
🌟 Latest Official News and Events from Holochain and Holo
Article: A Strange New Contraption
“New technology is tough to explain sometimes. But Holochain isn’t reinventing the wheel. Rather, we are inventing the bicycle when all you have ever seen or used are wagons.
Holochain is built from familiar technical components and best practices, just as a bicycle is built from wheels, gears, frames, and steering mechanisms which all previously existed as basic forms or principles in other contexts.”
To see the entire article, click here!
Holo Newsletter! “Don't miss out on the action! Subscribe to our Holo newsletter for monthly doses of excitement. Receive fresh ideas from our digital visionaries.”
You can choose from two learning journeys, either as a Developer or as an Enthusiast!
Dev Office Hours with Holochain Core Devs - Wednesday, January 24th, 2024 at 17:00 UTC.
“Designed to enable developers building on holochain to meet with Core Developers, ask questions, make suggestions, and collaborate on solutions. This one-hour event will be held every other Wednesday.”
Where: Dev.hc/Discord - Voice Channel 1
For a complete listing of all of the Holo Ltd and Holochain Foundation events go to their ‘Upcoming Events’ page!
🌟Latest News from the Holoverse:
Video Release: This is BIG: How Verifiable Data Powers up Web 3/Zebu Live 2023
Unleash the future with us as moderator Fraser Edwards leads a star-studded panel featuring Garrett Skrovina, Strategic Partnerships at CoinDesk, Paul Mason, CEO of Keyko AG, Mary Camacho, Executive Director at Holochain Foundation, and Sandi Fatic, Founder and CEO at Calimero Network, into the depths of one of the most innovative conversations of the decade.
🌟Other Related News & Events
Intriguing new NSF grant for ethical tech! - Lead from Tibet Sprague (Hylo)
NSF and philanthropic partners announce $16 million in funding to prioritize ethical and social considerations in emerging technologies
The ReDDDoT program invites proposals from multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams that examine and demonstrate the principles, methodologies and impacts associated with responsible design, development and deployment of technologies
For more information about ReDDDoT, visit the program website or register for an informational webinar on Feb. 9, 2024, at 2 p.m. ET.
Do You Have News & Updates?
If you are a team member of a Holochain Project and would like to let us know your latest news and updates, please contact us here!
🌟 And, find more at hAppenings.community!
Are you Curious and want to learn more?
Are you an Advocate for Holochain and the projects being built on it, do you want to be?
Are you a Creator of Holochain Projects? Whether you are a developer, designer or have just a GREAT idea, this would be your place to begin. Explore our Holochain Project Database.
And be sure explore ways to:
If you have a question, request, or simply a desire to connect more about hAppenings.community please click the link above!