← ConveGenius case study research cut · the discovery

Before the reward system, two rooms full of sticky notes.

You can't reward behaviour you haven't mapped. Across two working sessions with the ConveGenius team, we did the unglamorous part first — who's on the app, what they come to do, and what already moves them. This is the discovery the gamification system was built on.

Feb 15 2024 · rewards sessionFeb 16 2024 · activities sessionwith Shikhar, Divya, Shivangi, Aabhar
who's on the app

We sorted students by what moves them, not what grade they're in.

The team knows its users from the inside. We pulled that knowledge onto the wall as motivation types — the achievement-driven, the social, the ones who only show up when a teacher says so, the explorers poking at every feature:

Achievement seekers Social learners Practical experimenters Encouraged by the teacher Competitors — quizzers Gamers / engagers Explorers — features Discoverers — content Utility users Focused on a target

Those collapsed into five motivation types we could design against — and a mind-map of the motivators behind each:

Achievement seekers Social learners Practical experimenters Authority-influenced Explorers & discoverers
Mind-map: five student categories, each branching into the motivators that drive them.
Student categories → motivators. The raw material the reward system draws on.

Context the team flagged that changes the design — who you're really rewarding, and when:

parentsright now unaware, and often indifferent or hostile to app time.
the AP effectEnglish is mandated in all schools — those students use it far more broadly.
own the hardware?a student on their own device is a different category of use-case entirely.
what they do, and how often

A sprawling activity list collapsed into eight goals.

We dumped every activity on the platform — current and proposed — then clustered them by the purpose they serve. Many activities, few underlying jobs:

The room's sharpest finding was a gap: they wanted Social Competition every day — but didn't have enough daily content to feed it. Discovery, via the Posts feed, became the daily lever instead.

the reward landscape

What already rewards students — and what could.

Before adding anything, we inventoried what the app already does, then opened up the field of what's possible. That gap is the design space.

Already in the system

  • Spin the wheel
  • Score cards for quizzes
  • Confetti on task completion
  • Lucky draw
  • Live-quiz leaderboard (top 1–10)
  • Certificates for competition-zone winners
  • Olympiad rank (AIR) notifications
  • Teacher rewards for best reel
  • Likes & comments
  • Universal leaderboard / learning score

References we held in the room for what "good" feels like: Duolingo and Brilliant.

This is the ground the system stands on.

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