Developing LadderOut project to help cope with porn addiction

LadderOut is a mental health coaching software to support people who require additional help in breaking free from adult content use.

LadderOut offers a program that can help with research-based information, interactive videos and skill-building activities, thus covering the most crucial aspects of the porn-quitting process.

Hani Sultan is a serial business owner from Sweden. He launched a startup with his own money to help people overcome their porn addiction as well as fully recover right after.

The situation

Thanks to the rapidly evolving World Wide Web, the pornography industry experienced a boom back in the 1990s. It made it possible for people to access pornographic material with a lesser risk of exposure than ever before, resulting in an entirely new type of marketplace and a tremendous increase in both the supply and demand.

The increased availability and consumption of pornography have caused a lot of people, whether that be worried parents, physicians or psychiatrists, to notice the mental damage that pornography can do to an individual. Even though there’s no official medical diagnosis for a porn addiction yet, it doesn’t mean that pornography is harmless.

There are a lot of research studies confirming that people activate powerful and mood-altering chemicals that can rewire their minds when they watch pornography. People start craving it more than normal human connections, and they’ve come to believe they are flawed and unworthy of love eventually.

In fact, numerous researches suggest that people who describe themselves as having a problem with pornography have a lot in common with people with drug or alcohol addictions. There are a bunch of projects devoted to the struggle against this severe issue.

That said, Hani Sultan decided to create a new project that would allow for effective treatment and control of pornography addiction thanks to anonymous tests and quizzes. After reviewing a few candidates, Hani Sultan reached out to the Brocoders team to carry out his project.

Working process

To begin with, Hani Sultan has invited a seasoned psychologist to put together a treatment program that was then transformed into a step-by-step recovery plan. Once this was done, the client came to us with a document that highlighted the sketch projects. To consider every crucial detail and come up with an efficient development strategy, we started with collaborative workshops.

Following the client’s visions and requirements, it was decided to create a web-driven product from scratch, including both the design and the admin panel. Thus we chose Ruby on Rails for the backend and React.js for the frontend. To overcome the challenges above and push on to the next level, we proceeded to prototype the idea with the UXpin tool.

Based on recent studies, people who tend to watch pornography are too overloaded with information, and it’s hard for them to concentrate on the inputs, lectures, quizzes and videos. It was the ground-breaking reason why we decided to opt for a simple and minimalistic design in order to help people concentrate on the program rather than distracting animation elements.

Once the website design, along with prototypes, were approved by the client, we moved on to the development phase. That said, the decision was made to divide the entire development process into four stages in order to go through every crucial detail and keep the sight of the big picture:

• Workshops
• Prototyping
• Design
• Development

Our team

To exceed the client’s expectations, we assembled a proactive team of on-site seasoned professionals with years of software development experience. Our specialists examined the ins and outs of the current business issue to let people stay on top of their mental health.

They demonstrated their ability to meet tight deadlines while responding to the ever-changing business requirements without sacrificing the product quality. The team was comprised of:

Our Services

• Product development
• MVP development
• Web app development

Technology

Key challenges

It’s worth mentioning that the psychologist was continuously working on the recovery program all the way from the development stage and after the product launch. Due to this fact, it was necessary to introduce amendments to the existing program while ensuring all the changes would have no impact on the users’ progress. Backed by their rich expertise in the software development field, our specialists managed to successfully cope with these tasks.

Delivered product

Brocoders helped bring to life an innovative idea and delivered a client-oriented solution designed to aid people in breaking the cycle of pornography use. Driven by full-fledged research studies, we have ended up with a highly efficient model that helps people quickly recover and return to a healthy life.

This project has two types of users: a user who wants to break free from pornography addiction and a support person, such as a parent, a friend or a psychologist invited to the system by the current user.

There are four steps to sign up on the platform: users enter their name, gender, age and a personal goal ─ the reason why they decided to sign up for the program in the first place. All the information is safely stored on their profile where they can change it, personalize the program, delete the account and invite the support person.

After the sign-up, users are invited to fill in the information about themselves, which is essential for their recovery. They will be given access to eight main modules of the program and three additional ones.

As mentioned above, the Ladder program has eight modules designed for the personalized educational content, various activities and missions to complete, whether that be lectures, quizzes, questions, presentations or videos. The modules are meant for the estimation of multiple factors:

• Triggers
• Blockers
• Breakers
• Motivators
• Stress level
• Current values

My Recovery Plan is the main page for users, where they can see goals as well as all the necessary information that is automatically filled out during the passage of modules. Once a user completes his module missions, the recovery plan page is updated with new data.

Backed by such a helpful tool, users can easily monitor their progress, identify their triggers, set clear goals and come up with life-changing strategies to overcome their issues. Moreover, there are three additional functionality modules:

• Relapse module
• Skills
• Journal

In the Journal module, the user can add his own thoughts throughout the period of recovery. Also, users can find important parts of the lectures in the Journal.

In the Skills section, a user can identify specific skills he would like to gain during the program. Users can either choose between a set of preselected skills or add their own unique skills that would help them out with the addiction.

There is also a possibility for users to reset the recovery clock in case they have lost control and watched pornography. Then the Relapse module appears on the dashboard, helping the user come back to the program and analyze why he has watched adult videos during the program.

On top of everything else, here are the most vital features that users can enjoy while sticking to the LadderOut solution:

• Thanks to a professional psychologist, users can select a program supplied with a wide variety of materials: the very best practices in brain science, psychology and addiction treatment.
• The project implies a support system when a user can invite any support person who would be able to analyze his progress.
• Users can make their own color customization to enable comfier work.
• Users have access to resources (favorites, documentaries, videos and TED talks on recovery, saved infographics and visual aids, links to additional research and articles, etc.).