Goal-tracking app with an AI coach

Context

GrowMate is an internal software product from creative agency UDefine, designed to make goals tangible and visually insightful. It started broad: a tool that would let SME entrepreneurs run their entire business, from CRM to operational and financial processes. That scope turned out too large, after which the product was narrowed down to the operational side, focused on tasks. Later, a mobile version was developed as well, aimed at students as a new target group. As an internal test product within UDefine, GrowMate keeps taking on new directions and intentions, and the project continues to evolve.

Problem

People working with goals keep running into the same obstacles. Goals often stay abstract and unclear to an entire team, causing motivation to fade. Existing systems are complicated and discouraging, especially without technical knowledge. Data from social media, ads and websites is scattered, making overview nearly impossible. And without a clear plan, it's hard to see which actions actually lead to results, causing opportunities to slip by. GrowMate was built to bring these disconnected, hard to track pieces together into one tangible, visual system.

Role and Approach

As the sole designer, I'm responsible for the entire visual side of the product, which brings its own challenges around budget and available time, since this isn't an externally paid project. My role covers the UX/UI of the product, the development of the design system, the further development of the Matti persona, and everything else that falls under the visual side, from social media to website and presentations. This role was assigned by Danillo, owner of UDefine and the client for this project.

At the core of GrowMate is the goal garden, an interactive garden where each plant represents a goal. As you make progress, the garden grows with you, making progress feel tangible and visible instead of hidden in numbers.

Alongside that, I developed Matti, an integrated AI assistant. With Matti, the goal wasn't a separate dashboard full of data, but an assistant that actively responds to what you do, gives targeted suggestions and moves along with the way you work. Matti needed to feel like support for your work, not another system you have to learn to understand.

Decisions and Trade-offs

A key trade-off in this project was scope. The original ambition, an all-encompassing business system, was deliberately dropped in favor of a focused, task-oriented product. That narrowing made it possible to invest more deeply in the core experience (the goal garden and Matti) instead of spreading thin across many surface-level features. The later expansion to mobile, with students as the target group, was a next step in sharpening exactly who GrowMate is meant for.

For Matti, the choice was deliberately made for an assistant with character and behavior, one that learns from how you work, rather than a purely functional data dashboard. That choice ties directly into the problem that other systems feel discouraging and impersonal.

Result

GrowMate is still very much in development, partly due to the limited budget and time available as an internal project. It has, however, already been sent out as a test to a number of companies, with generally positive feedback and useful input to keep developing the product further.