Construct: Adaptive Motion System for a Learning App

I designed and built the motion system for Construct, a mobile learning app: an animated course path a user climbs as they learn, a mascot that travels with them, and a streak that makes coming back every day feel worth it. Each piece was authored in Rive and handed to the iOS team to drive with live data.

Every user's path is a different length — it might be a handful of lessons or several dozen, and it isn't known until the app loads. So nothing could be hand-placed or one-off. The whole system had to feel crafted and deliberate while adapting to any amount of content, and hand off to engineering with no ambiguity about who owned what.

A vertical trail the user climbs, one lesson at a time. Podium nodes unlock and open as the user progresses, a mascot lands on the lesson they're currently on, and a progress line fills in the trail behind them. It's built to feel handmade at any length — three lessons or thirty read as equally intentional.

The streak's job is to turn a number into something a user doesn't want to lose. I designed a persistent flame with a subtle idle flicker so the streak reads as a living thing you're keeping lit, not a static badge.

The reward beat. When a user finishes their day and the streak ticks up, the flame charges and surges and the count rolls forward — the most satisfying moment in the loop, given room to land before settling back to its resting glow.

The project lived at the seam between design and engineering, and getting that seam right was most of the job. I kept the expressive motion in Rive and left timing, layout, and navigation to native code — each animation built complete and self-contained, with a clean way for the app to trigger it and know when it finished. That boundary is what let a fairly ambitious motion system hand off smoothly and survive real devices.