Role
Product Designer (UX/UI, Research)
Scope
Team
Product, CEO
Year
2023
Duration
Six Months
After completing a brief anxiety assessment, users enter 3–5 minute play sessions, tracing paths left by positive sprites while avoiding negative ones and earning medallions along the way.
Despite the app's strong therapeutic foundation, many users dropped off after their first session. Reviews suggested the experience wasn't communicating its value early enough, and repetitive gameplay reduced motivation to return.
How might we strengthen first-session engagement and motivate users to return without compromising the app's calming, therapeutic foundation?
Internal data identified two early drop-off points: onboarding and gameplay. To better understand why, I analyzed the first-time experience to uncover where users were losing momentum.
Onboarding
Two friction points stood out:
Seven Step Assessment
After onboarding, users completed a seven-step anxiety assessment before reaching gameplay. While this supported personalization, it required users to commit before seeing the app's value and delayed access to gameplay.
Gameplay Observations
While playing the game, I swiped on the positive paths as they appeared on the screen while intentionally ignoring negative or unhappy faces.
Sessions lasted 3–5 minutes and were intentionally calm and repetitive.
Progress was reflected through the environment, but it was unclear how it signaled session completion or success.
Since few wellness apps intentionally use game mechanics, I looked at casual games like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja, which use short, repeatable loops and simple interactions to understand how Personal Zen could encourage return through its gameplay.
Based on these findings, I redesigned the core gameplay to make progress more visible and meaningful through lightweight feedback, with no competitive scoring.
I tested the redesigned experience using a high-fidelity prototype, comparing the current and updated flows.
Emotional response to progress: Was the updated
experience more motivating?
Did progress and feedback feel meaningful?
On game mechanics/comprehension
Replay motivation: Would you return to the app?
What Testing Revealed
Testing surfaced two additional areas for refinement: progress framing and reward comprehension.
Challenge #1
“Not a fan of the resilience meter; the app telling me I’m resilient doesn’t sit right.”
Users found the Resilience Meter and the term “resilient” confusing and evaluative.
I recommended removing the Resilience Meter as a simpler game summary, reinforcing session completion rather than labeling emotional states.
Challenge #2
“I guess you collect the medallions, I don’t know what those are for.”
Users were unclear about collecting medallions and earning rewards.
This validated the shift toward visible progress and lightweight feedback. While post-launch retention data wasn't available, the testing suggested the redesign was moving in the right direction.
“More structured and calming”
- Participant 2
“Encouraging without being competitive”
- Participant 5
“Rewarding without feeling like a game”
- Participant 3
Potential opportunities to improve upon beyond the scope of this project.