Anusha Farooqui

Marineath – Gamified Productivity App

Boosting student focus and confidence through a thriving marine ecosystem.

Context

Marineath is a gamified productivity app designed for students, young professionals, and freelancers who struggle with procrastination and prioritization. Instead of overwhelming users with rigid task trackers, the app reframes productivity as nurturing a thriving marine ecosystem. Each completed task grows your ocean world—unlocking fish, corals, and deeper levels of the sea.

Design Arcade is my thesis project — an interactive platform where students and young professionals practice design principles through play. This case study focuses on how I built a brand identity that bridges the excitement of arcade culture with the credibility of design education.

Deliverables: Logo System, Color Palette, Typography, Mockups, Brand Guidelines

Scope

UX Research

UI Design

System Map

Wireframes

Timeline

3 months

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Challenge

Context

Research revealed that students and young professionals often face procrastination, distraction, and burnout. Existing productivity apps either overload users with features or lack personalization, failing to break this cycle.

The challenge:

How can we design an app that makes planning engaging instead of stressful?
How can we introduce personalization and motivation without overstimulation?
How do we balance habit-building, fun, and usability?

Deliverables: Logo System, Color Palette, Typography, Mockups, Brand Guidelines

Challenge

Build a visual identity for Design Arcade that instantly communicates both learning and play. It had to feel bold enough to attract young designers, but structured enough to be taken seriously in an educational context.

Research & Insights

Conducted competitive analysis of apps like Habitica, Finch, Forest, and Productive to identify gaps in engagement, usability, and personalization.

Key learnings included: real-world connections (e.g., Forest’s tree-planting) drive resonance, while overstimulation (Finch) or limited flexibility (Forest) lead to drop-offs.
Developed ecosystem maps to visualize stakeholders, technologies, and pain points across student life.

Design Development

Built personas (Siyu the student, Alex the freelancer, Rosie the young professional) to anchor user needs in real contexts.

Mapped journeys and frustrations: procrastination, poor time estimation, lack of structure, and burnout.
Crafted the marine ecosystem metaphor: each completed task contributes to growth—unlocking fish, corals, and deeper ocean levels.

Key Feature Flows

Onboarding

Marineath avoids the pitfall of overwhelming onboarding seen in competitors. Instead, it introduces the marine theme with a skip-friendly, progressive flow. Users can select a starting ecosystem and create their first task quickly, reducing drop-offs and improving first-time engagement.

Key Feature Flows

Goal Setting
Research showed that students and freelancers struggle with prioritization and time estimation. Marineath provides a clear task creation flow with built-in timers (Pomodoro & regular). This gives users focus and structure, while linking tasks directly to ecosystem progress.

Key Feature Flows

Rewards & Motivation
Instead of shallow or one-size-fits-all rewards, Marineath connects productivity to visible growth. Each completed task adds new marine life, plants, or decorations. Over time, users unlock deeper ocean levels with rare species, turning task completion into a rewarding journey.

Meaningful Motivation: Completing goals unlocks marine creatures and well-being rewards, turning productivity into an engaging and rewarding experience.

Ecosystem Growth & Tracking: A growing ocean world and organized rewards system keep users motivated by linking progress to visible, lasting change.

Outcome

Marineath presents a fresh approach to productivity apps: one that shifts the focus from pressure to progress. The final prototype balances habit tracking, gamification, and personalization, all wrapped in a calming marine aesthetic. By tying personal growth to a visible, evolving ecosystem, the app reframes productivity as nurturing something alive rather than ticking off to-dos.