WanderWorld: A Mindful Game to Reclaim Focus and Redefine Productivity
A gamified solution leveraging psychological insights to help Millennial and Gen Z professionals reclaim focus and presence in their daily workflows.
UX Researcher, Designer
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Summary
Millennials and Gen Z employees struggle with mental well-being due to busy schedules and toxic productivity. To tackle this issue, we developed WanderWorld, an app that reimagines mindful breaks as gamified experiences. By blending mindfulness, well-being, and productivity, WanderWorld helps users recharge and stay focused in an enjoyable way.
Digital Natives are increasingly suffering from burnout
Burnout is increasingly common in today’s fast-paced workplace, with 58% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennial workers reporting its effects. Blurred work-life boundaries leave them feeling perpetually "on," making meaningful breaks difficult to take.
Metaphors That Reveal Digital Age Challenges
We held 3 focus group sessions, with a total of 11 participants, who reflected on various metaphors related to attention spans and their personal experiences. The discussion revealed common trends as well as individual variations in how they conceptualized attention, distraction, and focus.
The most common metaphors users resonated with — erosion, rollercoaster, and heavy load — captured the overwhelming experience of content consumption in the digital age during their downtime.
Concept web of responses from our focus group sessions
Mindful and intentional practices empower individuals to reclaim focus
Interruptions Are Not Created Equal
Constant work does not equal productivity
For knowledge workers, especially in high-pressure tech environments, there’s often an internalized belief that constant work equals productivity.
Intentional mindfulness practices can reduce cognitive fatigue
Intentional mindfulness practices, even for short durations, can reduce cognitive fatigue and enhance productivity.
How might we enable users to “disconnect to reconnect” by taking meaningful breaks to practice mindfulness?
Objectives:
Reduce toxic productivity habits fueled by constant digital engagement.
Approaches using psychological concepts and games
In this phase, we thought “big and wide” about potential design concepts through an imaginative game called "A Few of My Favorite Things," which encouraged designers to envision future-focused ideas.
The most compelling insights centered on removing workplace stigma surrounding breaks and reimagining break-taking as a positive, intentional practice. Concepts like snack-based social matching and personalized well-being reminders crystallized our core philosophy — that breaks are not interruptions, but essential opportunities for reconnection, creativity, and personal restoration.
Our team playing “A Few of My Favorite Things”
Psychology Concept 1
Dual-cognitive system
Our design activates System 1 to encourage immediate action (e.g., responding to a notification) while engaging System 2 to promote deliberate mindfulness during the break itself. This dual engagement ensures the intervention is both engaging and effective.
Psychology Concept 2
Embedded Design (Intermixing)
We balances building focus (on-topic) with incorporating engaging game elements (off-topic) to make the persuasive process feel less intimidating and more approachable.
Gamification applies game-design elements (e.g., rewards and immersive experiences) to non-gaming contexts to motivate behavior change.
Concept Posters
We eventually narrowed it down to three contenders and pitched them to our Persuasive Design class:
Share and Pair
Spot and Snap
Focus Flow
In the end, “Focus Flow” emerged as our best idea, and we immediately refined our concept and jumped into three rounds of rapid user testing.
3 rounds Iterative Prototyping
1. FocusFlow
An app that syncs with the work calendar
Creates avatars based on users' personality quizzes
Offers games during break times to encourage mindfulness practice
Visualizes streaks and mindfulness practice data
-> Users felt the game lacked enjoyment
2. WanderWorld Paper Prototype
A gamified app that promotes "focus" by healing the ecosystem, featuring an office and retreat theme
Players can customize their avatars
During break time, glowing windows prompt players to begin a quest, they can collect fruits of a specific color within a time limit to enchant the forest, earning points for each fruit
Accumulating points to unlock badges
-> Users were worried about being addictive that they would not want to go back to work
-> Users suggested adding more nature sound elements for a more immersive experience
3. WanderWorld High-Fi prototype
-> Users appreciated the visuals and showed interest in the game's development process.
-> Users found adding the water sound effective for shifting out of a "work" mindset.
-> Users expressed strong interest in the game’s tasks and looked forward to seeing more new challenges.
Final Prototype
