Sparkles Gamified Chores Platform

Transforming household responsibilities into exciting adventures that kids love to complete

Sparkles gamified chores platform — hero overview with mascot and app screens on purple background

Overview

Role- Collaboration

UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher, Illustrator

Timeline

Oct-Nov 2025

Status

In development

Deliverables

Design Systems, User flows, Wireframes, UX Research, High Fidelity Prototypes, Visual Design, Illustration Design, Website Design

Summary

This is a gamified chore management app designed to bridge the gap between parental expectation and children's natural motivation. While most chore tracking tools stop at task logging, Sparkles goes further, transforming household responsibilities into an engaging quest-based system powered by XP, coins, achievement badges, and a fully customisable reward economy.

The product was designed for two distinct users: parents who are exhausted by constant enforcement and nagging, and children aged 5–12 who need meaningful incentives to build lasting habits.

Highlights

Sparkles app highlights row one — onboarding, splash, and hero setup screens Sparkles app highlights row two — smartlist creation and chore assignment screens

Challenges

Spotlighting issues

Sparkles challenges illustration: pink star character with speech bubbles — existing chore trackers are too rigid, they fail to stay fun over time, parental burnout from constant monitoring
Sparkles challenges illustration — pink star character

Spotlighting Issues

  1. 1

    Existing chore trackers only log tasks

  2. 2

    They fail to solve the core issue of intrinsic motivation

  3. 3

    Parents burnout are caused by constant policing

Solutions

Providing answers

Sparkles lightbulb character illustration

Sparkles is a dual app system that replaces family stress with self-driven effort. We stop the cycle of nagging by turning every household task into a rewarding hero's adventure.

Kids are motivated to earn XP, Level up the Leaderboard and get Coins while the Parents Dashboard gives objective data on consistency and habit formation.

Research Summary

Brainstorming

Brainstorming sketches — hand-drawn wireframe explorations for the Sparkles app

Wireframing

Lo-fi fidelity wireframes — low-fidelity screen layouts for the Sparkles onboarding and chore flows

Key Features

Enrolling Your Heroes screens Setting up the Adventure screens Parent-Controlled Rewards screens Family leaderboard, weekly leaderboard and family report screens — Progress You Can See. Results You Can Trust Family Chats and Notifications screens Profile, Admin and Support screens

Style Guide

Sparkles style guide — style variation 1 Sparkles style guide — style variation 2
Style guide screens — chore list, reward shop, and progress tracking layouts Style guide wireframes — early-stage screens for Sparkles onboarding and chore assignment flows

Visual Designs

Visual designs — full high-fidelity Sparkles screen designs including kids and parent screens

Custom Illustrations

Rewards

Custom reward illustrations — popcorn, ice cream, remote control, and sleeping bag reward icons in outline and colour

Parents Avatar

Custom parent avatar illustrations — diverse parent character designs in purple, pink, and blue uniforms

Reflections

Two children happily doing chores together at home

This project taught me that designing for children is designing for honesty. They will immediately ignore anything that does not genuinely excite them and that pressure made me more intentional as a designer. I stopped asking 'does this work?' and started asking 'does this feel worth it?' That single shift in perspective now sits at the centre of everything I design.

This project also tested my discipline. Working against a tight deadline pushed me to make decisive design choices quickly, trust my instincts, and prioritise what truly mattered for the user experience. Looking back, the constraint was as valuable as the creative process itself.

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