Visualising a mentality toolbox

Designing session, streak and reward mechanics for a mindfulness app.

A mental health app approached us curious to see if Duolingo-style gamification could help their customers visualise the progress they were making. Our brief was to build around mindfulness content with a light, subtle points economy.

To succeed, we needed to respect the nature of that content. We decided to show users the tools they were acquiring and the time they were investing in their mental health, rather than turning the experience into a game.

• Increased engagement

Post-release data showed a measurable rise in engagement, with more content consumed than before.

• Toolbox positioning

Book summaries are a genuinely useful resource, but they demand sustained attention. We broke the material into bite-sized segments, allowing users to work through substantial content at a comfortable pace.

• Daily progress

There are many routes to better mental health. By encouraging daily use through small rewards (new songs unlocked each day) we helped ensure users engaged with their wellbeing consistently rather than sporadically.

Gamification isn't right for every app, and there were large reservations about whether it belonged in the mindfulness category at all. But the market leaders, Calm and Headspace, demonstrated that when applied judiciously (it does not resemble a game) it works. Our experience is that despite gamification being an unfashionable term within agencies, it frequently improves products and adds genuine enjoyment when applied thoughtfully.

We also centralised a user profile to display each customer's progress and record the achievements they've earned through using the app.

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