The ask

We used Ommetje during the lockdown periods of my study in multiple classes and it always struck me how bad the UX design was. One day, through one of our classes at school, we were tasked to redesign the entire app. The Ommetje app had a couple of problems which needed to be tackled; the younger target audience stopped using the app after a period of time and most of the users stopped using the app when they were not in the top ranking of their team.

The app was in essence having a hard time to keep users engaged and committed to do their daily walks. Which is understandable, because creating habits for users is extremely hard. The two classes that gave this assignment were Seductive Interaction Design and Human Computer Interaction. Each class was teaching something different and what I learned is displayed in the whole redesign.

In essence we were tasked to improve the current Ommetje app, aiming to keep users engaged and motivated to take their daily walks. Below you can see the older/current version.

Current Ommetje analysis

I identified a few problems with the current Ommetje app which prevented them from fully achieving all the goals that were stated in the briefing, such as keeping users engaged. The app misses that splash of magic and character; animations, micro-interactions, gestures, a popping design, proper affordances, progress indicators or feedback, could’ve been done a bit better. So these points of improvement were a great starting point for me to develop my redesign.

My approach: Gamification

One of the classes we had was Seductive Interaction design. During this class we were taught how to implement persuasive principles into our digital products (to an ethical extent). The literature that we were given was from Harri Oinas-Kukkonen; while reading his paper it struck me that Ommetje would do great if it were gamified (a common strategy to keep users engaged and motivated to use certain products). So this was the approach I took.

My idea was to gamify the entire experience and tie this to a social dimension within the app. The gamification would help users get rolled into the habit of taking walks, consistently rewarding them with medals or trophies for each milestone they achieved. But a digital trophy or medal has no real meaning for the user in and on itself, but starts to gain value when you stimulate users to share these achievements with other “competing” users. My assumption is that users will try to compete with each other; consistently walking their daily walks (Ommetjes) to obtain medals, which they can then show-off to their teammates in a repeated process. When users have been competing with each other for long enough the habit of taking daily walks will (hopefully) been formed. 

Try the prototype here →

See documentation here: Human Computer Interaction →

See documentation here: Seductive Interaction Design →

The (at the time) current version of Ommetje

Learnings

• Learning how to implement persuasive patterns in a digital product: it was through this project that I learned how many different ways there are to keep users engaged and how to implement these principles, but it led me to the question below.

• What are the ethical boundaries of seductive design: while trying to make Ommetje more persuasive to keep users engaged, I found it difficult to see where the line was between ethically responsible and irresponsible. Creating a product that is solely focussed on keeping users engaged is what led us to where we are, a world where the majority of the youth is glued to their phone. I don’t have the answer to this question, but it sparked the train of thought.