January 2021 – April 2021
Daily Quests is a task management app that brings elements of games to organize users’ productivity and encourage the development of skills. Creating an epic scale to their daily grind using RPG elements and reaping the rewards for the user’s deeds. Embarking alone or with a group of friends, setting real-life goals, and getting rewarded in a fantastical game world helping with motivation and organization.
How to use Gamification to help users to manage their time and get additional motivation in daily life.
First, a competitor’s research was made, looking into current successful task managers and applications that successfully use gamification. From them the key takeaways were:
To better understand my user base I conducted a survey and interviews with possible end-users. The aim was to understand the goals, frustrations and expectations with productivity platforms and similar applications.
Based on the background research and my own research three personas were created to exemplify the possible users of the platform. Using them to help guide design decisions.
I wanted users to have an immersive experience in a game world parallel to their lives. For that, they will experience this primary motivational cycle: Setting their real life tasks (helping both with organizing their lives and setting goals); accomplishing them being rewarded in the game system; using these rewards in a game element of the application (alone or with friends) and progressing in the game system giving additional motivation for the user to grow in their real lives.
The UX was planned to resemble an RPG game using tropes, visual indicators and language from fantasy to set an additional level of immersion. Also, to deepen the link between the user and the application, the user has an avatar that would be fully customizable to resemble them. Also, the in-game rewards are equipable to the avatar, a visual reminder of the user’s real-life progression.
The application is divided into four main sections: Quests (task manager), Adventure (game element), Inventory (reward system), Social (where the user can enter in contact with friends or find communities).
The Quests will be a straight forward task manager with two types of tasks. First, the repeatable, daily activities or tasks they want to make a habit. Second, single-time accomplishments will be more significant tasks that can be divided into smaller stages or have a deadline (e.g. handing over an assignment on school or finishing a project for work.).
The Adventure is accessed by tokens received by completing quests. It consist of two parts: an individual game that will be played alone and a more challenging game that can be played alone or with friends (encouraging the connection between users). From playing these games, the user will get rewards.
The Inventory will be a section where the user can use the rewards to upgrade their avatar to advance on the games sections.
Daily Quest went through many iterations, where lo-fi prototypes were created, tested with target users, and recorded feedback to improve the application.
With the feedback from the user of the lo-fi prototypes, I created a prototype going throw the main cycle of the application. To illustrate the experience of the end-user.
Try Daily Quest
The application had its shortcoming, and it needs further development in some areas. The contention between the game and task manager can be improved.
The next steps will be: