the wheel of activities
Design Case
Concept
This project deals with solving issues that arose from social isolation among teenagers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated self-isolation measurements—such as government-imposed lockdowns. A prevalent problem was apathy and a lack of motivation, which generated feelings of guilt and anger. I tried solving this problem by introducing a means of suggesting activities to teenagers while encouraging social interaction with their peers, thus increasing their motivation and keeping them entertained. This platform uses a gamification method in which the user spins a ‘Wheel of Activities’ and receives randomized challenges meant to help them increase their drive to do productive and fun activities.
Problem framing
Most of the users I interviewed experienced problems that were psychological in nature and included symptoms like anxiety, anger, depression, apathy. After analysing the relevant literature, I had gathered enough insights to form a strong problem definition. The framing of this problem is centered around a concept that I call the Guilt Cycle.
The guilt cycle
It would start with teenagers feeling a lack of motivation to engage in productive activities, so instead, they would turn to browsing social media. They compared their daily routines–usually regarded by them as mundane and unsatisfactory–to social media influencers. By doing so, they would notice this contrast, and realize they are not being productive—in their own views and definition of productivity.
Because of apathy, their lack of energy and willpower would become an obvious obstacle. This failure made them feel an unpleasant and distracting feeling of guilt, which will proliferate the lack of motivation–leading to the completion of the guilt cycle.
solution
There is a lack of a medium that gathers and curates entertainment activities focused on teenagers, trying to help them cope with social isolation during lockdown, and increase their motivation levels by engaging with others. The insights from the research phase highlighted the need for such a medium.
Teenagers were not able to motivate themselves, so they could use a catalyst to push them to engage. They believed productivity would ease their symptoms of guilt, anxiety, and apathy. This catalyst would be The Wheel of Activities—an app that is based on the lucky-draw game of the 'Wheel of Fortune.'
Design choices
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Easy to access
I chose a mobile app as the platform for this product— because teenagers spend a significant amount of time using their phones already.
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Wheel Design
I utilized a casino-inspired system to create an ‘addiction’ in a positive way. Some of the elements that served as inspiration for my design choices include the lucky draw—which gives the users a feeling of surprise and gives them a chance to ‘win’; a limited number of spins; visual appearance depicts a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ style game.
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Style
I created a style guide to achieve consistency in design, making it more intuitive for the users.
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Reward System
The reward system is inspired by the computer gaming experience, used to measure and communicate progress to the users.
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Gamified Experience
I decided to go for a a gamified experience with the purpose of increasing motivation.
Design process
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Research
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Problem Definition
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Design Opportunities
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Ideation
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Prototyping
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User Testing
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Validating
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Analysing the results
Learnings
With this project, I went through all the phases of a design process, which now motivates me to follow these steps for my future projects–to get the best results out of my designs.