Mewtual - Meow Meow Worshippers

Link to your design file

Describe your project (Max 150 words)

Mewtual is a gamified, cat-themed study buddy app that helps people stay motivated, connected and accountable when studying or working. By combining real-time collaboration, gamification, badge incentives and a quirky cat theme, Mewtual transforms productivity into an engaging and rewarding experience. By using human relationships as our foundational model, we steer users away from reaching for AI when working on tasks, which would drive them away from human connection.

Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words)

survey data student-ai relationship relationships and AI chatbots chatbots and loneliness

Why do we struggle to stay motivated when studying or working alone?

A lot of us understand the feeling of sitting down at a laundry list of tasks waiting to be completed, and somehow end up doom-scrolling or getting distracted by other sidequests along the way. But what if getting things done felt like less of a chore and more like a fun game that actually rewards you for accomplishing your tasks and goals?

When surveying study preferences, the majority of respondents answered that they are motivated when others complete tasks, and that gamified elements would motivate them to study harder. This was when we realized that for most users, accountability would fuel their motivation to work harder. After all, when we see others making progress, we’re more likely to push for ourselves. Alongside being held accountable, users find gamified experiences to help them, so we brought the 2 ideas together — why not make an app that combines an interactive experience that rewards you to keep pushing towards your goals alongside another person?

With this in mind, we turned to existing study buddy/body doubling apps. If accountability is the motivating factor behind accomplishing goals, then why did 88.9% of users who used study buddy app/services felt unsatisfied or neutral about their experience? Looking further into competitor apps, we found most like FocusMate weren’t designed to truly connect people, and just more of a digital timer with a passive matchmaking system.

Within our secondary research, we found that increasingly, students were relying more on AI for homework and essay help. Because of this, students stop relying as much on their network for support, leading to increased isolation. But beyond homework, students have started relying on AI for artificial intimacy and emotional support. Services like character.ai and chatbots are very popular for decreasing loneliness, and although they provide a good solution for solving problems such as these, there is not really a substitute for real human connection. Thus, artificial intelligence can only be a stopgap for problems such as these.

That’s where Mewtual comes in to be an engaging, gamified study buddy app that motivates users to accomplish their tasks, together. It turns studying and completing tasks from an isolating task into a shared experience that fills in the gap for human connection that AI cannot.

Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words)

With the above sources of information, we decided to make a study buddy app that motivates students to study harder with body doubling and prioritizes human relationships by having two people work together towards a goal while studying/body doubling. While on call with each other, the two people need to complete "quests", which are just overall progress trackers to see how much each person has completed their individual tasks. This generates a sense of collaborativeness even if both people are working on entirely different things. Other gamified elements like streaks and badges give the user individual goals to work towards.

One of the most important concerns collected by our survey were reports of being uncomfortable with showing faces on camera to a stranger, as well as potential safety concerns. But because body doubling requires that the other person be seen, if the camera was turned off it would be hard for our app to work as effectively as we claimed. So to alleviate this, we first added preferences when entering a study session. Users could choose to study with a friend, someone from their local area, and someone completely random. Especially for college students, getting to choose another person from the same college as they were would alleviate some stress about studying with a stranger. More people answered that they would study better with a friend than with a stranger, so we also added that as an option. The second feature we added to smooth the awkwardness and hesitation of being seen by a stranger is a chat feature that popped up right before two people entered a study session. There, users could potentially chat about interests and hobbies to make their partner feel like less of a stranger. We also added an option to skip for the people who did not mind being seen by a random person. Finally, on the safety side of things, we added a report button that immediately blurred the other person’s camera and allowed the user to essentially block any malicious behavior. And there was always an escape hatch in the form of an exit button from the room, which allowed users to freely leave.

More people preferred one-on-one studying rather than in groups, and researching other similar models of study aids showed that the one-on-one business model was quite popular. Although there were study websites that had multiple people in a group studying together, we ultimately felt that having one-on-one sessions were a better model, as in a group there is less accountability, and in a one-on-one session there is less room to hide that you aren’t doing work.

Finally, people really like to play. It's a fundamental part of the human experience, and we reflected that in our choice to use gamified elements. Having an element such as levels and badges that you could collect, as well as being able to see those elements on other users also made studying seem more worthwhile, according to our survey.