It seems I skimmed poorly and got everything but the important part of the background. I went from the article title to "(Not Boring) suite of everyday apps" to

It seems I skimmed poorly and got everything but the important part of the background. I went from the article title to "(Not Boring) suite of everyday apps" to "Designing for Feel" and somehow missed "habit tracker app" and "habit" being mentioned multiple times. This kind of design does make much more sense in that context. Thank you for the correction. (All I can offer in my defense is that about half the article sure sounds like it could have been a design doc for making bad modern UIs, but that's the fault of other UI designers, not this article or author.)