Yoga Flow: Boosting Engagement Through Gamified Design
Created and designed a gamified yoga app, led user research, developed personas, created wireframes and prototypes, and integrated gamification features to enhance user engagement. Usability testing and iterations ensured a user-friendly, motivating experience.
Overview
Yoga Flow is a gamified mobile app concept designed to help users build and maintain a consistent yoga practice through motivation, community, and personalized experiences. Developed as part of a school UX design project, the app was created for a conceptual wellness startup seeking to engage users in daily mindfulness and movement through game-like rewards and progress tracking.
The core challenge was to understand what motivates users to return to wellness apps—and why many abandon them—and to use those insights to design an experience that feels rewarding, approachable, and sustainable.
As the lead designer, I was responsible for conducting user research, creating personas, defining key features, and designing user flows and wireframes. I explored various gamification strategies such as goal setting, streak tracking, achievement badges, and community challenges to boost engagement. I also conducted usability testing and refined the design based on user feedback.
The final prototype delivers a mobile-first experience with a clean, calming interface and interactive elements that support habit-building without overwhelming users—balancing motivation with mindfulness.
Problem
Many users struggle to maintain a consistent yoga practice due to a lack of motivation, accountability, and engagement with existing wellness apps. Despite the abundance of content, these platforms often fail to encourage long-term use or support meaningful progress.
The core challenge: Design a mobile experience that motivates users to return regularly, while still aligning with the calming, mindful nature of yoga.
Solution
To address the lack of long-term engagement in yoga apps, I designed Yoga Flow with gamification at its core:
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Incorporating progress tracking, streak rewards, badges, and community challenges to motivate users without overwhelming them.
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Interface was kept clean and calming to stay true to the spirit of yoga, with a focus on simple navigation and personalized content.
These design choices directly responded to user feedback around burnout, boredom, and lack of structure. By blending motivational elements with mindful UX, the app encourages users to return consistently, helping them build a sustainable wellness habit.
Project Goals
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Apply User-Centered Design Principles: Conduct user research to uncover motivations and pain points, and translate findings into actionable design decisions.
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Design for Engagement: Use gamification technique, such as streak tracking, badges, and community challenges to increase user retention and interaction.
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Craft a Mindful UI: Create a clean, intuitive interface that aligns with yoga’s calming nature while maintaining usability across all user levels.
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Personalize User Experiences: Develop user flows and features that support individual wellness goals through tailored content and progress tracking.
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Iterate Through Testing: Conduct usability testing, gather feedback, and refine the product to ensure the final design meets user expectations and supports long-term use.
Role
Lead UX Designer/ Researcher
Tools
Figma
Team
Solo project | Sought feedback from instructors & peers
Timeline
Feb 2025 - Apr 2025 (2 months)
Project Timeline
Month 1
02/03/2025 Conduct pre-production research and create 2 user personas and journey map
02/10/2025 Design an onboarding and tutorial experience
02/17/2025 Design an adaptive interface and iterate the onboarding and tutorial
03/24/2025 Iterate the onboarding/tutorial and adaptive interface
Month 2
03/03/2025 Analyze game concept and user research
03/10/2025 Adaptive interface prototype and user testing
03/17/2025 Onboarding/tutorial and adaptive interface prototype and user testing
03/24/2025 Refine onboarding/tutorial and adaptive interface prototype and present to stakeholders
Research
To guide the design of Yoga Flow, I applied key UX research methods to understand user motivations, pain points, and behavior within wellness apps.
Method
User surveys and interviews: Insights revealed a strong desire for structure, progress tracking, and community connection.
Using these findings
Defined core gamification mechanics, such as streak tracking, badges, and social challenges that aligned with users' goals while preserving the calming nature of yoga.
Created detailed personas, mapped user flows, and prioritized features based on user needs and behavior patterns.
This research formed the foundation for all design decisions, demonstrating my ability to apply human-centered design thinking to create both engaging and intuitive user experiences.
Personas
I developed user personas based on insights gathered from surveys and interviews with individuals who regularly engage with wellness or fitness apps.
The target audience for Yoga Flow are 25-45 year old women. Mostly casual mobile users looking for a relaxing and challenging game, beginners to yoga interested in learning more, even wellness enthusiasts with busy schedules who want a quick, motivational, guided movement session.
The personas reflected:
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Key user types, including beginners seeking guidance and motivation, and experienced users looking to maintain consistency.
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Unique goals, frustrations, and behavior patterns, which helped inform the app’s feature set, tone, and gamification elements to ensure the experience was both supportive and engaging.
Design Thinking
Yoga flow is about a seamless user experience, which means the UI needs to adapt to different skill levels, movement abilities, and device sizes. To sustain player motivation and encourage long-term engagement, Yoga Flow must have interactive accessories, progression-based gameplay, personalized recommendations, and community-driven challenges.
Additionally, accessibility features, such as colorblind mode, text-to-audio, etc., will ensure the game is inclusive and enjoyable for a diverse audience.
These features will make yoga practice more dynamic and interactive and promote a deeper connection between players and their wellness journey, ultimately making Yoga Flow a more effective and engaging platform for mindful movement.
The interface should:
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Have a guided self-check system where users can compare their posture with the on-screen reference
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Adjust difficulty based on player feedback
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Support audio-visual synchronization for a fully immersive experience
Onboarding/Tutorial Flow Chart
Mid-Fi Wireframes (Iteration 1)
The purpose of the early game design was to create a sense of serenity and peace through stunning visuals and personalized themes, such as a zen garden. It aimed to be simplistic, emphasizing yoga poses rather than a central storyline. This approach encourages players of various experience levels to practice yoga at home and find peace whenever they desire.
Design System
Mid-Fi Wireframes (Iteration 2)
Some graphics and icons were used solely for wireframing, which resulted in changes during later iterations to allow manipulation and editing in specific prototyping styles and colors.
The lack of a storyline led to UX and UI changes, as gamification aspects needed to be utilized to create a more immersive experience for casual gamers looking to be encouraged and motivated to improve their workflows.
User Feedback Survey
Feedback Summary
The feedback can be analyzed by categorizing the data into usability, engagement, and accessibility. This entails prioritizing key issues and identifying patterns and trends to determine what is effective and requires improvement. Finally, implementing actionable changes and summarizing my findings will enhance the next iteration and address the identified issues.
Iteration Plan
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Organize feedback to identify issues and prioritize improvements through usability, engagement, and accessibility.
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Prioritize areas for improvement to focus on the most impactful changes of common issues and fixes.
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Iterate the design by making changes that are easily testable and adjustable.
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Conduct a second round of testing to ensure the improvements help new players.
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Refine and finalize the onboarding experience for a smooth and engaging flow
High-fi Wireframes
After creating the preliminary designs for the onboarding/tutorial and adaptive interface, I conducted user testing to identify areas for improvement, assess the game’s enjoyment level, and detect any issues or bugs.
Analysis of Collected Feedback:
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The overall game design and concept are easily understandable and easy to navigate.
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The game’s difficulty is just right for the target audience.
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Players had fun playing the game.
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The graphics were ok but can be improved.
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The story was lacking and resulted in some players not being fully engaged.
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The game’s controls and menus were easy to use and navigate.
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Players were frustrated by the contrast of text and images.
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Players were confused by a leaderboard for a calm game and wanted more gamification aspects that aligned better with the game concept.
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Players suggested focusing more on the game concept, removing the fitness component, and adding more to the story and gameplay.
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The majority of players would play the game again at this stage in the prototype.
Game Improvements that need to be made:
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Improve the contrast between text and images: Improve visibility and accessibility for all players.
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Develop more of a story and incorporate it into the tutorial: Make their experience more fun and engaging.
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Reassess the need for a leaderboard or explore options to make it align better with the game concept and goals: The goal is to promote mindfulness and peace, not so challenging.
Prototype
Construction of Prototypes
The wireframes and prototypes were created in Figma. Building prototypes in Figma makes it easy to construct and share them without coding, providing rapid feedback loops and quick iterations.
Testing and Feedback on Prototypes
The prototypes enabled me to test ideas, identify flaws, and gather user feedback during each iteration of the design process. Player testers offered valuable insights into the overall user interface design and helped pinpoint bugs through online surveys. They also shared suggestions on how the game could be improved and what features they would like to see. The more feedback I received, the better the designs became, ultimately leading to more user-centric outcomes.
Iterating Prototypes
With the feedback I received, I was able to fix bugs, learned where to create more interactions, and adding more gamification aspects, such as a greater storyline, leaderboards, etc..
Postmortem
What I learned
Over the past two months, I have learned a great deal about game design, best practices, various layouts and controls, and the importance of playtesting. Understanding how playtesting can inform design decisions was crucial, especially since I do not have a background as a gamer. This experience has allowed me to view the development of game design from a different perspective, improve my workflow, and learn how to incorporate gamification into my designs.
I have also gained valuable insights into prototyping with Figma, creating variables, and optimizing my workflow. Initially, it was challenging to develop the habit of creating components and saving them in a style guide, particularly when designing in both low-fidelity and high-fidelity. In the last week, I focused on working with variables. While it is more challenging than it appears, it is worth the effort, as it will enhance transitions in my prototype and help me avoid duplicating 40 different screens.
Problems and Solutions
Since I’m not much of a gamer, I initially struggled to incorporate gamification elements into my game. My limited prototyping skills also meant that there weren’t many interactions at the start. However, as I progressed through the courses, my confidence grew, allowing me to make bold decisions and execute engaging experiences. At one point, I found myself overthinking and changing the design too much, which moved me away from the project's original goals. The feedback from both users and my instructor was invaluable in guiding me back on track and highlighting areas for improvement. I truly enjoyed iterating the design and tracking my progress, as I can see how much I’ve grown throughout this process.