MedalUp Social Self-​Improvement Game

MedalUp helped users reach goals by breaking them into stages: bronze, silver, and gold. I joined a multi-disciplinary team to design the UI and explore building a business around the game.

The team used the Lean Startup methodology, so design, research, and development proceeded in parallel. Design reviews with the whole team set the direction for each week. Each iteration included a mix of competitive research, guerrilla user testing, design, and technical exploration.

I designed the Minimum Viable Product as a mobile app so users could claim medals on the spot when they were won. As part of our testing plan, the app would track medals earned per challenge to test our value hypotheses. To test our growth hypothesis it would track the rate of sign-ups from links sent in shared medals and challenges. A behavioural psychologist would interview users and review anonymised challenges to see if users were breaking down and setting goals effectively.

The team was thrilled with the design, and informal user reviews were positive. A single developer working part-time completed both the front– and back-end a few weeks later.