The journey to achieving goals is better done with friends

BET?! is a mobile app that uses gamification, playful design, and social features to help users make progress in their personal goals. The app borrows research from extrinsic motivation in its design choices to make the experience engaging and exciting.This passion project was created out of a personal desire to explore how social relationships can impact motivation.

Role

Product design, illustration, research,animation

Research

Motivated to understand motivation

A common emotional path a person goes through when attempting to achieve their goals includes the following: Defining their goal > Starting > Continuing > Losing motivation> Quitting.Common reasons why people eventually quit their goals include a lack of motivation due to too much focus on the larger end product.

In order to disrupt this cycle of quitting, I looked into extrinsic motivation and emphasizing the small steps in journey.

The missing pieces

Extrinsic motivation

Goal setting often come from intrinsic motivation, but extrinsic motivation, which is the use of external rewards or incentives, can also be helpful for continuing to strive towards those goals.Extrinsic motivation can provide a sense of accomplishment, increase engagement and effort, and help establish new habits. Social relationships can also play a significant role in extrinsic motivation, as other people can provide support, recognition, and opportunities for activities that offer external rewards. In media, you can find extrinsic motivation being used in games, with rewards such as EXP, currency, or items.

Emphasizing the small steps in journey

Positivity throughout the goal-achieving journey includes making sure to celebrate every bit of progress along the way. It is important to understand that the journey towards reaching a goal includes a mix of both everyday habits and other smaller tasks, such as trying a new recipe or hitting a personal record.By focusing and celebrating even the 1% of progress we make everyday, we can build a journey towards our goals that is both equally exciting to engage with and rewarding.

How might we motivate and build positive mindsets into the lives of people who struggle with achieving their goals?

Create an exciting experience that celebrates and encourages even the 1% of progress.

The Solution: Goal creation

The journey to goal achievement made fun with mini celebrations, gamification, and friends

BET?! aims to help you achieve your overall goals by breaking them down into smaller quests. Complete quests and gain EXP to level up in your goal.By splitting the larger goals into bite-sized tasks, it puts more focus on the journey rather than the end goal. This allows users to stay motivated, and find joy in the little achievements.

Easily define and personalize your goals

Define your goal and outline your motivation quickly and simply. Next, have fun adding your personal touches to make your goals page an enjoyable experience to return to.

Create a quest

Quests can be created through goal pages, the create button, or even for other friends. Since there were multiple access points to quest creation, a quick drawer was designed so it can be repeated throughout the app.The design is clean and simple, so users can easily create their quests without being overwhelmed by too many options.

Keeping track of your progress along the way

Progress is tracked through social posts shared with friends as well as gamification aspects such as EXP and level bars. The profile highlights overall progress and achievements, while giving quick access to your specific goal pages.

The Solution: Social features

Support from your friends every step of the way

Your friends are also able to sent "bets" or little bits of EXP to support your current quests. When you complete that quest, both you and your friend gain EXP. If not completed, you both will lose that amount.

This "bet" feature allows users to be motivated by both their peers, external rewards, and a small sense of responsibility.

Pointing you in the right direction

Sometimes it's hard to get started on a goal. Or maybe your friends know more about what you want to improve in and want to help you out.BET?! allows friends to see your goals and suggest quests for you to take on.

Getting involved

The discover feed highlights your friends progress, quests, goals and achievements. The high visibility of your other friends achievements was made to motivate users to make progress in their own goals.

Design principles

To keep users in a positive mindset, we prioritized playful and exciting design, while still keeping it clean and focused on the tasks at hand.

Emotive companions: users can customize and choose their own character to use throughout the app. Illustrative characters allow for fun and expressive emotions that users can interact and relate with.

Joy in every interaction

Micro-animations were used tastefully throughout the app to further emphasize the feelings of celebration and playfulness.