Within the past few years there's been a huge trend in using “self care” apps. They’re designed to help users with mental health problems or anyone with a stressful life to get into a more ordered and healthier lifestyle. These apps remind users to take meals, medication, drink more water, tidy up, and overall helps people try to understand their daily needs as a human to survive. Some will also help improve the user’s mood by encouraging them to be more positive and help motivate them to live better. People have mentioned how much these apps have helped them become more positive and feel better about themselves. However, as great as self care apps can be, not everyone can stick with them and they get deleted soon after.

I decided to design a gamified self care app, called monami. It will act primarily as a virtual pet app, but will also double as a self care app. The user, runs a foster house for animals, and they’re presented with a set of 4 animals to choose from to take care of during the beginning. Once a pet has been fostered, the player will level up and more animals will be introduced to them to choose from. There will be a maximum limit of 2 pets at a time, so that they don’t overwhelm themselves with too many pets. Every time the user logs in they will be given funds to be used for the pets expenses, such as buying food, clothes, their favourite home decor or toys to play with.

As the user takes care of their pet, they will be encouraged to take care of themselves. All the animals are positive, happy and will often try to crack jokes so that the user can have a worthwhile experience. The intentions for the app is to make the user reflect on how important it really is to take care of someone, and how they are also deserve that same type of love and attention. It’s not easy to start paying attention to one’s well being, but with small steps and with the friendly environment set up by the game, I hope monami will help shift the user’s perspective on their life a little bit.

I really wanted push the idea of how we should be investing our time and energy in taking care of ourselves, like we would do for a loved one, such as a pet, a friend or a child. I considered the potential pets that could be featured and the type of self care activities I should include. After highlighting the core aspects of what I wanted with the app, I moved on to researching on potential users, and also looked at other apps in the self care market and virtual pet realm.

The personas feature a younger target market, since this app would be beneficial and eyecatching to them the most. Older users are always welcome to use it however they might feel disinterested in the virtual pet concept. Over here we look at a university student and a 5th grader, and see how they might benefit from using monami. 

Initial low fidelity sketches for the app, and also sketches for the characters and scenarios.

I went for a cartoony look with the bold black strokes, instead of a flat one, so that the characters would pop against the background. The main colour palette of the user interface features subtle tones that are easy on the eye and the icons clearly communicate their purpose with the user. The characters all have their own unique features that help them stand out. Overall the game has a cute and warm atmosphere to it, that should make the user feel at home while using it. 

The prototype feature's the onboarding process, the core functions and also some additional scenes the user might get while playing monami. Everyday the user will have to take a few minutes to interact with their pets to log their self care activities, whether it's eating with the pet, studying with them or doing any other kind of activities the user has set up. Wireframes and screens can be viewed through the links provided below.

For optimal viewing, please view the case study linked to this project. Additionaly, you can also view the complete prototype and also the screens.