Built Gamification System That Turned Drop-offs Into 2x Daily Engagement

Created gamification features at Nirva Health that boosted retention and doubled daily engagement through rewards, coins, and streak tracking.

Nirva Health, a Y Combinator-backed startup, helps people embrace Ayurveda and Yoga through personalized wellness plans. But by mid-2023, the app was struggling to keep users engaged::

• Without gamification features, users lacked motivation to complete daily wellness tasks.

• Engagement with core activities like diet logging and yoga tracking was low, as the experience felt repetitive and unrewarding.

• Retention suffered, with many users dropping off after initial onboarding.

The challenge? Design a gamification system that motivates users to return daily, rewards them for progress, and turns routine wellness into an engaging, habit-forming journey.

To understand why engagement and retention were low, we conducted 25+ user interviews with Nirva Health users who had tried daily wellness plans. Here’s what they shared:

• "Logging my diet every day feels repetitive. I don’t feel motivated to continue after a few days."

• "I like yoga sessions, but without rewards or progress tracking, it’s easy to skip them."

• "The app doesn’t make me feel like I’m achieving anything. I can’t see my progress clearly."

• "After onboarding, there isn’t much excitement to return daily—it feels like the same routine."

• "I often forget about the app because nothing nudges me to come back and complete tasks."

Increase Engagement & Retention — Introduce gamification features that motivate users to return daily, boosting overall app stickiness and reducing drop-offs.

Encourage Healthy Habit Formation — Support Nirva’s mission by ensuring users consistently engage with diet logging, yoga practice, and wellness tasks.

Drive Growth Metrics — Improve weekly task completion and reactivation rates, leading to higher customer lifetime value and stronger subscription conversions.

Build Scalable Design Components — Design gamification elements (coins, badges, streaks) as reusable UI components that can integrate seamlessly with other app features.

Stay Motivated & Rewarded — Provide users with coins, badges, and streak tracking that make completing daily health tasks rewarding and enjoyable.

Track Progress Clearly — Help users visualize progress with clear indicators and feedback loops, giving them a sense of achievement and momentum.

Build Lasting Routines — Encourage users to form sustainable wellness habits by turning routine tasks into engaging, gamified experiences.

The introduction of gamification significantly improved engagement and retention at Nirva Health. Weekly task completion jumped from 31% to 55%, showing stronger user consistency. Retention also improved, with daily return rates growing steadily and reactivation rising from 17% to 25%. These changes highlighted that gamification wasn’t just a visual add-on—it became a core driver of healthy habit formation and long-term user loyalty.

Unfortunately, my time at Nirva ended before I could further develop the gamification system. If I had stayed, here’s what I would have focused on:

Expanding Reward Mechanics — For a project of this size, even with thorough testing, some minor bugs are bound to slip through. I would have worked with the engineering team to quickly identify and resolve any issues users might encounter after launch.

Optimizing Post-Launch — Monitor real-world usage data and user feedback to refine coin values, badge unlocks, and task difficulty so that rewards remain balanced and meaningful.

Listening to Users — Conduct regular interviews and surveys to understand what motivates users most—whether it’s streaks, social recognition, or tangible rewards—and adapt features accordingly.

Continuous Improvements — Explore cross-feature gamification (e.g., integrating rewards into diet logging, yoga, and subscriptions) to unify the experience and strengthen Nirva’s ecosystem.

I am proud to count this among my most significant projects at Nirva Health. I am also incredibly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate closely with my Senior Product Designer Archi Kashmiriya, and key stakeholders, Co-Founder Amit Kumar Verma, Founder & CEO Nived Narayanan.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my work. I hope you enjoyed learning about my design journey and the process behind it :)