Ideation | Timeline
People are finding it increasingly difficult to stay off their mobile devices.
Increasing screen time has been linked to declining physical health, psychological health, and sleep patterns; however, people continue to stay connected to their mobile devices even though it is detrimental. This is called "maladaptive consumption in the form of smartphone overusage," and our brain's pleasure system is the main contributor. Our brains crave rewards, and with increased stimulation through our mobile devices, we can easily feed this craving by checking our phones.
A quick overview
PixelPet is a productivity app and mobile game wrapped in one! PixelPet helps users stay off their mobile devices by gamifying screen time monitoring. In PixelPet, users evolve pets with evolution points and prizes they earn from lowering their daily screen time. Users can also battle their pets with in-game bosses to win rarer pets and additional evolution points.
Product Design
User Research
App Development
What if we use this stimulation to log off our phones instead of staying logged in?
With this project, I aimed to address this issue by gamifying screen time monitoring. By incentivising users to stay off their phone, I could change this pleasure by staying logged in connection to a pleasure by staying logged off connection. Rewards and gamplay through staying unconnected thus takeover this stimulation our brains crave.
Duration
5 months
April-August 2025
My Roles
Product Designer
User Researcher
App Developer
Team
Me :)
Week 1-2: Ideate on different ideas for final project, collect inspiration for each and present ideas to classmates.
Week 5: Transfer paper wire-frames to Figma and turn them into digital wireframes, continue to work on website.
Week 7: Synthesize data from user-testing and edit prototype based for usability, continue to work on website, become familiarized with Unity.
Week 9: Continue to code the combat system in Unity and continue working on website.
Week 11: Continue to finalize combat system if needed, start coding the rest of the user interface in Unity, continue working on website.
Week 13: Continue coding the rest of the user interface in Unity, continue working on website.
Week 15: Finalize coding the rest of the user interface in Unity, finish and publish website, present the finished app and finished website during final presentation.
Week 3-4: Complete secondary research and work on character designs, start paper wire-framing, and work on website.
Week 6: Turn digital wire-frames into a digital prototype on Figma, present prototype for midterm presentation, run primary research and usability testing on users, continue to work on website.
Week 8: Once prototype is finalized, start coding the combat system in Unity and work on website.
Week 10: Continue to code the combat system in Unity, present finalized combat system and finalized prototype of user interface for the final presentation, continue working on website.
Week 12: Continue coding the rest of the user interface in Unity, continue working on website.
Week 14: Start finalizing the user interface in Unity, continue working on website.
How can I create an app that helps users stay off their phones but is also fun to use?
Realizing the problem
How a late-night study jam turned into a project brief.
After a long a cappella rehearsal at UCSD, my friends and I would usually stay after to finish some homework together. One of my friends, who often expressed how difficult it was for her to stay off her phone, had a collection of screen time monitoring apps she had previously downloaded. During one of our study jams, she had mentioned one of these apps: an app that grew a tree if you lowered your screen time. But, even with this app downloaded and working, she joked about constantly killing her tree by looking at her phone. None of these apps worked for her. And I had to ask myself: why?
The answer: none of these apps were rewarding to use. There were many unsolved issues when it came to this app's design, such as the looming question of "what else does the user gain from this experience?" What keeps them from deleting this app and returning to their old ways? Why should users care? And is there a better way to create this type of product? This is why I wanted to develop an app that not only helps users stay off their phones but also keeps them interested. This experience led me to ask this question:
This project was created as my undergraduate senior capstone project at the University of California, San Diego. Throughout the development of this project, I worked as a Product Designer, User Researcher, and App Developer. I used software such as Figma and Procreate for paper wireframes and prototypes and taught myself how to code mobile applications in Unity.
Let's get started
My timeline.
To make sure I stayed on track for this project, I created a timeline for myself to follow. This project was created over the course of 2 quarters at UCSD (5 months). I planned this timeline out based on each week for each quarter.
Kayla Windust's Portfolio
kayla.windust@gmail.com
kewdyyy
Kayla Windust
Influences
An overview of my main inspirations.
For this project, I was very inspired by mobile games that used evolution systems or turn-based combat. My main inspiration was Pokémon Go and PokeDex because of their evolution system and how Pokémon Go allowed users to explore their real-world environment while using the app. Tamogotchi also inspired me as you are caring for a virtual pet, except — in my app — you take care of it not through giving the pet attention but by lowering screen time.
For the combat system, I was inspired by turn-based combat games such as this mini-game in Genshin Impact called Genshin Invokation TCG. This mini-game was designed like a card game where users could choose from normal attacks, which have a fixed damage level or an elemental attack that does more damage depending on the opponent and takes multiple rounds to charge.
Finally, my roommate's cat, Suki! She inspired the starter pet designs I created, which you can easily see as they are very cat-like.
