Projects
MIT Web.Lab Honorable Mention
A gamified productivity web app built in two weeks. The goal was to motivate students to complete their tasks by transforming productivity tools into an interactive, game-like environment. We designed a virtual room experience where users controlled a pixelated bear avatar and interacted with different productivity features, each represented as an object in the room.
Designer
Allison Fan
Minnie Liang
Jasmine Shone
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
High school and college students often struggle to stay motivated with traditional productivity tools. Most to-do list apps feel:
Static and uninspiring
Easy to ignore
Detached from emotional reward
Lacking a sense of progress or narrative
At the same time, our team faced major constraints:
Only two weeks to design and build
Limited engineering bandwidth
No existing design system
High competition quality bar (450+ teams)
Need to ship something polished, not half-built
We decided to focus on the following design goals:
Make task management feel engaging rather than overwhelming
Keep the main user flow simple, intuitive, and fast for busy students
Visually reinforce progress and motivation
DESIGN DECISION 01
Standard productivity dashboards feel monotonous and flat, which makes it easy for users to disengage. I designed a virtual room where each productivity feature was represented as a physical object:
Desk → To-do list / notebook
Clock → Pomodoro timer
Speaker → Spotify playlist
Bookshelf → Achievements and journey
Users controlled a pixelated bear avatar and physically “walked” to each feature. This spatial UX made the experience feel playful and exploratory, turning productivity into something users could emotionally connect with.
DESIGN DECISION 02
We initially had more feature ideas than we could realistically implement in two weeks. We prioritized a single, clear primary user journey:
Sign in
Enter the virtual room
Select a productivity feature
Complete a task
Earn progress toward achievements and story chapters
Secondary features (advanced analytics, customization, social sharing) were intentionally cut so that we could ship a smaller, more polished experience that felt complete.
DESIGN DECISION 03
Complex UI patterns and animations would slow down implementation. I intentionally designed:
Reusable UI components
Simple layouts
Minimal, consistent graphics and color palette
This allowed our project to be implemented quickly while maintaining visual coherence.
DESIGN DECISION 4
Short-term gamification (points, badges) alone doesn’t sustain long-term engagement. We introduced a chapter-based journey system:
Users unlocked story chapters as they completed tasks
Visual progress reinforced long-term motivation
Achievements felt tied to narrative growth, not just stats
This created a sense of purpose and continuity, encouraging users to return even after initial novelty wore off.
The final product delivered:
A playful virtual room interface
A controllable pixel-bear avatar
Integrated productivity tools (to-do list, Pomodoro, Spotify)
A leaderboard for competitive motivation
A chapter-based achievement system
A cohesive UX that blended play with productivity
Despite the two-week timeline, the experience felt complete, usable, and emotionally engaging.
What I learned
How to scope UX under extreme time pressure
How to design emotionally engaging productivity tools
How to collaborate effectively with engineers
How to balance ambition with technical feasibility
What I’d do differently
With more time, I would run user testing with students to validate which gamification elements actually drive long-term behavior change.
