App Showcase: Plan Joy

What it does

Plan Joy is a productivity and task management app designed to make planning feel less like a chore. It combines a traditional to-do list with a Pomodoro-style focus timer, habit tracking, and multiple ways to visualize tasks. The app uses a friendly duck mascot and gamified elements like streaks and rewards to keep users motivated and engaged with their goals.

Where it shines

Plan Joy excels at making productivity feel approachable and fun. The onboarding process, while thorough, is filled with delightful character animations that bring features to life (00:06 - 00:36). The app's core strength is its flexibility. A user can switch from a simple checklist to a powerful Eisenhower Matrix with a single tap (08:55), instantly reframing their priorities without manual effort. Another standout moment is how the app hooks users into its gamification system. After completing the very first task, it immediately celebrates the achievement and prompts the user to set a streak goal (02:34), turning a small win into a long-term commitment.

UX highlights

• The app provides multiple views for tasks, including a standard list, an Eisenhower Matrix for prioritization (08:57), and a timeline view, catering to different planning styles.
• Swiping on a task reveals a clean set of contextual actions like edit, play (start focus timer), and delete, making management quick and intuitive (07:06).
• A dedicated 'Style Hub' (12:45) centralizes all customization options, turning themes, widgets, and app icons into desirable, collectible items.
• The focus timer is seamlessly integrated with the task list, allowing users to start a session directly from a task item.
• Coach marks and tooltips appear contextually during the first use of the main screen, guiding the user without a disruptive tutorial (02:20).
• The statistics and data review screens (05:45) are clean, visually appealing, and provide clear insights into a user's progress over different timeframes.

Monetization & growth

The app presents a soft paywall immediately after the onboarding flow (01:45). It uses a comprehensive feature comparison table to clearly articulate the value of the Pro plan. The paywall offers two subscription tiers, Monthly and Annual, with the annual plan highlighted as 'Most Popular' and its price broken down into a monthly equivalent to reduce sticker shock. Customization features like themes, advanced widgets, and focus timer modes are heavily gated behind the Pro subscription, serving as a primary incentive to upgrade.

Who it’s for

Plan Joy seems best suited for students, freelancers, and individuals who want a structured yet playful approach to managing their daily tasks and long-term goals. Its blend of serious productivity tools (like the Eisenhower Matrix) and lighthearted gamification makes it appealing to both seasoned productivity enthusiasts and those who find traditional to-do apps boring or intimidating. The focus on single-user productivity makes it less suitable for team collaboration.

Notes & opportunities

While the app is polished, the mandatory email sign-up at 00:36 creates a significant point of friction early in the experience. Allowing users to explore the app's core functionality before requiring an account could improve initial conversion rates. Additionally, the onboarding process is quite long, with multiple feature carousels. Condensing these into a single, more focused carousel could get users to the main app faster. The 'AI' toggle (07:51) is intriguing, but its exact function isn't made clear, which could be an opportunity for better user education.