Before starting my design process, I wanted to first understand the psychology behind gamification and why applications that employ it are so successful. So what is gamification? According to Merriam-Webster, gamification is "the process of adding games or game-like elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation." (3) What makes gamification so impactful? I came across an article that described the impact like this, "Gamification isn't about playing games, but about engaging experiences...It takes consumers on an engaging journey, making each point earned...feel like a person victory." (2)

The article also delved into the dopamine rush that users receive while using the rewards systems in these games. "Each time users achieve a milestone or earn rewards in a gamified system, there's a release of dopamine."(2) Mental Health America defines dopamine as a hormone that "connects feelings of pleasure to behavior to motivate action." (2) They also mention that ADHD is caused by a dopamine deficiency, which can lead us to conclude that the reason why so many of these gamified productivity applications are marketed towards those with ADHD.

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After learning about gamification and what makes it so appealing, I wanted to explore a few productivity applications that use gamification tactics. Some that I came across were:

Habitica: Where you gain XP by being productive and use that XP to unlock quests, customization, and other RPG like features (1)

Forest: Users are encouraged to be productive by planting virtual tress and gathering points to eventually be used to plant real trees (1)

Focus Friend: Help a bean focus on its knitting and use the things it knits to furnish its house

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Focus Friend in particular stood out to me because it has a similar premise to what I'm designing. While there are many things that Focus Friend does very well, such as inclusive language, simple designs, easy to reach text, and different focus modes, I wanted to see what I could improve on. There were three things that I found that I wanted to focus on improving in my application, in comparison to Focus Friend.

Clutter: While the overall aesthetic of Focus Friend is clean and cozy, I found that the decorating screen was a little cramped and overwhelming. The furniture is already placed in the room, but pieces you need to decorate are blurred out. On top of the blurred furniture are large green + (plus) signs. In my opinion the design looked a bit cluttered, so I wanted to do something more organized. My solution was to create a store page, where all the furniture is clearly visible and spaced out.​​

Color Scheme: The color scheme of Focus Friend is the stereotypical cozy game scheme, lots of browns, greens, and muted blues. While that can be comforting, I wanted a color scheme that was a bit brighter and colorful, to set Productive Pixie apart from other cozy style productivity apps.

One Currency: Like other productivity applications and games, Focus Friend has two currencies, socks and scarves. While 2 currencies is not nearly as confusing as some apps with 4-5, I wanted to make Productive Pixie as easy to use and understand as possible, so I kept one currency, Pixie Dust.