Zenzone

What if meditation was like playing a game?

Zenzone

Meditate like playing a game!

✦ OVERVIEW

An app designed to help users form a meditation habit.

MY ROLE

UX  Designer

type

Solo project

Focus

Gamification, Digital Design

TIMELINE

4 Months

Tools

Figma, Miro, Instagram

✦ result

60% less retention

from focus group study

Habit formation in 21 days

achieved based on the users empathy for a virtual pet

✦ THE USER PROBLEM

Lack of motivation and lack of time to meditate

Everyone is busy, but want to meditate as well. Most apps require at least 15 minutes for meditation, which users often find hard to spare. On top of this, they lack the motivation to meditate everyday as well.

✦ PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we

help meditators  fit 21min meditation into daily schedule so that they can build a daily habit?

Who
What
Why

✦ SOLUTION

Meet your meditation buddy

Just like a gym buddy, koi fish will motivate you to complete your daily tasks. You can buy props for the fish by trading your hard earned zenstone.

Meditate in increments

Meditate for as little as 2 mins. The app will remind you to complete your 21-min daily goal based on your phone activity.

✦ HOW DID I GET THERE?

End-to-end product design roadmap

NN Group's design thinking method

✦ User research

6 User interviews
Open-ended questions
Remote sessions
20-33 Y/O
3 M, 3F

2 main themes

Affinity mapping and clustering for insights and themes

Lack of motivation

All meditation apps are boring

All tasks are the same everyday. Even if I want to meditate, it is extremely repetitive.
- Shawn

Lack of time

30 min is too long!

I don't have 30 min in the morning. When I get home after work, I still don't have that kind of time.
- Grace

✦ Competitive analysis

What is the market offering to motivate meditation?

I audited the features of 20+ applications.

All of them failed to address the users lack of time and motivation.

✦ Ideation

Less is more

Build the essentials product features and only that.

Gamification

Baking in habit forming elements so that the user comes back for more everyday

A day in the life of Radient Rachel

Storyboarding

Every decision ever

User flow

Hand drawn wireframes

Inital sketches highlighting trigger, action , variable rewards and investments for gamification.

Visual branding

Calm colors mimicking mediation and inner peace

✦ FINAL DESIGN

Variable rewards

Complete the daily goal of 21min a day and get variably rawarded.

Investment - Trade and unlock

Trade your hard earned zenstones to unlock more levels

Buy props for the fish

Upgrade using your zenztones so that the fish grows with you.

✦ test for measuting skin in the game

mimicking the app to test risky assumptions

I used instagram DM to mimic the engagement of the fish with all 5 users

01
👍🏼 60%
Users continued meditation at least for 5 days. An image of users  dashboard was shared daily with the fish to form a connection with the virtual pet.
❤️ 40%
On day 7, I intentionally didn't send the DM and as a result, 2 of the users texted the fish first to see if they can start meditating.
02
Users will re-engage with their meditation at a later time
Testing re-engagement via pop up
👍🏼 5/5
All users continued meditation at a later time to complete the goal of 21 min a day.
Users interaction with meditation buddy through instagram DM.

✦ Learnings

Self Reflection

Learnings

A simple solution is often the best solution, provided that it effectively addresses the user’s problems that no other competitor is able to resolve.
Virtual pets were highly praised by users. Zenzone almost became like the game “Clash of Clans,” where users kept checking the progress of their virtual friends.

Changes

Animate the fish more. Include features like the fish prop being built, which provides instant gratification & future gratification.
Find a way to commercialize this project without affecting the core function. Empathy.

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