It took a million changes to get us into a climate crisis, it's going to take a million more to get us out! Make sustainable changes today!
It took a million changes to get us into a climate crisis, it's going to take a million more to get us out! Make sustainable changes today!
View 3D Game Assets and Interactive Figma Below
View 3D Game Assets and Interactive Figma Below
View 3D Game Assets and Interactive Figma Below
Project Overview
Million Changes is a mobile gamification platform designed to encourage college students to adopt sustainable practices through challenge completion and environmental progression. Working with a Boise State professor, our team developed a prototype that transforms climate action into an engaging, goal-oriented experience. The app combines habit-tracking mechanics with an evolving virtual environment that responds to user consistency, creating a system where players unlock achievements, customize profiles, and watch their digital ecosystem flourish as they complete real-world sustainability challenges.
Research & Discovery
The project emerged from a clear need identified by Boise State: college students want to participate in climate action but lack accessible entry points and sustained motivation. Through initial stakeholder meetings and user research, we discovered that the target audience, environmentally conscious students, struggled with two primary barriers: uncertainty about which actions create meaningful impact, and difficulty maintaining long-term commitment without tangible feedback. Our AB testing and user interviews revealed that students responded positively to progression systems and visual rewards, but found purely educational approaches either overwhelming or disengaging. This insight shaped our decision to balance formal educational content with casual, playful mechanics that could sustain engagement over time.
Reference materials used from other services in similar fields
Design Process
As lead UI/UX designer, I developed the complete visual language and interaction framework for the application, working closely with React developers, Unity game developers, 3D artists, and project managers. My process began with wireframing the core user flow including, onboarding survey, challenge selection, completion tracking, and environment interaction ensuring each touchpoint balanced functionality with delight. I designed challenge card layouts that communicated difficulty levels and point values at a glance while maintaining visual interest across varying content types. The onboarding flow required particular attention to reduce friction while gathering meaningful data about user commitment levels, which would inform personalized challenge recommendations. For the game environment, I established design systems that allowed upgrades and activity states to feel rewarding without overwhelming the interface, collaborating with 3D artists to ensure visual consistency between UI elements and environmental assets.
Iteration & Refinement
One of the central design challenges was balancing gamification with education creating an experience that felt genuinely fun while delivering substantive sustainability guidance. Early iterations leaned too heavily toward game mechanics, which testing revealed made the environmental mission feel secondary. I refined the visual hierarchy to foreground challenge content and impact messaging while maintaining engaging progression feedback. User flow presented another iteration point: initial designs included too many navigation layers, causing users to lose context when moving between challenges, achievements, and their environment. I streamlined the architecture to create a more intuitive hub-and-spoke model where the environment served as the central anchor point. AB testing also informed refinements to the streak system visualization—users needed clearer feedback about how their consistency directly affected environmental vibrancy, leading me to design more explicit visual connections between action and consequence.
The following slides document a few of the low fidelity mockups I created for the users rank progression. Each slide highlights significant changes and improvements of the designs style and functionality. The final slide's design informs the user of their rank and current progression without overloading them with information.
Preview Project
3D Assets
As users complete challenges and interact with the app more and more, their efforts are reflected in their garden. The garden starts off as an old, dilapidated property that over time fills with life through the user's actions. Trash gets removed from the landscape, the house gets a fresh coat of paint, and a whole cast of animals begins to roam the garden. I was responsible for modeling these animals and was given full creative liberties. Each model had its own set of challenges, both artistically and technically, given the restraints of mobile phones. Despite this, each animal is special and brings their own personality to the screen!
Final Notes
The final prototype successfully integrated challenge completion, achievement tracking, profile customization, and a dynamic environment system that responded to both user level and activity consistency. Client feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with only minor revisions requested all of which were implemented and delivered within the same day. The design balanced formal educational content with casual, playful interactions through carefully crafted UI patterns that shifted in tone contextually: challenge descriptions maintained an informative voice while achievement unlocks and level-up moments celebrated user progress with animation and vibrant visuals. The modular design system we established positioned the prototype for future expansion into additional sustainability categories, multiplayer features, and leaderboard systems, while the core mechanics proved both technically feasible and engaging during user testing sessions.
