Strata710 edits to learn where AI stops and design starts.

Play Strata

Strata across four iOS screens on a pastoral hillside: the block tower, the day timeline, the plan grid, and the insights dashboard.
Role
Designer & builder
Team
Solo designer
Built with
Lovable, then Xcode
Demo
Playable on this page
Year
2025
Overview

Strata is a gamified habit builder: your wins stack up as colorful blocks, Tetris meets Minecraft, until the month becomes a tower you built one habit at a time. I designed and built it end to end in Lovable, then taught myself Xcode and rebuilt it natively.

Problem

The assignment stopped at a pitch. Strata didn’t.

The assignment in my entrepreneurship class was to pitch a product. I did not want to stop at slides, so I built the thing. The problem was my own: some habits stick effortlessly, picking up a guitar never does.

The build

710 edits to get it right.

The hard part was not the code, it was the direction. The 710 edits were not repairs, they were iterations: the more specific I got, the better it came out.

Where AI stops

AI is a tool, not a replacement.

AI is a tool for bringing my designs to life, not a replacement for doing the design. The color system, the way a block lands, the tower dance: all mine. AI only got it playable faster than I could alone.

Jayden writing on sticky notes at a desk, planning Strata
Planning Strata, one sticky note at a time.
A working collage: Apollo wordmark studies beside a squirrel photo and Strata’s habit blocks
Strata’s blocks feeding Apollo’s first sketches.
Interaction & sound

Finish your day, and the tower dances.

Every block lands with a sound, and you earn XP as your tower climbs. The interaction I am proudest of is the payoff: finish every habit for the day and the whole tower breaks into a dance. That is the thesis, turning friction into something you look forward to.

150%the lift in engagement a real game layer can add over a plain interface. amplifAI

The full walkthrough, with sound on.
Outcome

Finishing Strata is what led to Apollo.

After months of work I saw that even done well, Strata was not the best product I could make: the gamified-habit space is saturated, and one more block-stacking tracker was never going to win. Seeing that is what led me to Apollo.