01 / 20
Project · Capstone Brief · 10kdesigners · Cohort 11 Year · 2025

Gamifying
Groww.

Enhancing user engagement through behavioral design — turning the long, quiet wait of investing into a felt sense of progress.

Shivangi Sudan
Product Designer
2 weeks · 1 sprint · 12 screens
02 / 20
The Brief

Two weeks.
One app.
Make people stay.

A 10kdesigners cohort prompt: design a gamification experience for an app of choice that improves retention and rewards long-time users.

I picked Groww — India's largest retail investing app — because the gap between signing up and sticking around is where the real design problem lives.

Project brief on a Figma board showing the gamification challenge, a controller emoji, and the start and submission dates.
Start · Fri 7 Nov Ship · Fri 21 Nov Solo · End-to-end
03 / 20
The Problem

New investors feel intimidated by financial complexity, unrewarded by slow returns —
and abandon the platform after curiosity fades.

Three forces stack on top of each other: a literacy gap, a behavioral mismatch, and a business problem. The next three slides break each one open.

04 / 20
Force 01 — Macro
27%

The financial
literacy paradox.

Only 27% of Indians are financially literate (NCFE, 2023). Yet millions have an investing app on their home screen.

As Groww expands into Tier 2 and 3 cities, the gap widens. First-time investors view the market like gambling — and the first dip triggers panic-selling, then permanent abandonment.

The barrier to entry dropped. The barrier to understanding didn't.

05 / 20
Force 02 — Behavioral

The feedback
void.

Buy a stock. Start an SIP. Wait. Nothing visible happens for weeks. The portfolio might dip. There is no pulse.

Instagram

Tap → like → dopamine. ~1 second feedback loop.

Duolingo

Lesson → streak → notification. Daily feedback loop.

Groww (today)

SIP → silence → maybe a notification at month-end. ~30 day feedback loop.

06 / 20
Force 03 — Business

The 'one-and-done'
cliff.

A significant cohort completes KYC, makes a single ₹500 exploratory investment, and then goes dormant. There is no internal trigger to bring them back.

Today the only hook is market movement (fear / greed) or a fresh paycheque. The app has no quest, no streak, no reason to return.

Downloads app 100%
Completes KYC ~60%
Makes first investment ~35%
Returns in week 4 drops sharply

Illustrative funnel based on retail investing benchmarks.

07 / 20
The User
P
Priya Sharma
24 · Junior Marketing Associate · Bengaluru

First real job. First disposable income. Hears colleagues talk about SIPs at lunch. Feels FOMO and anxiety in equal measure — knows she should invest, but charts and jargon make her flinch.

Tech literacy

High · Digital native

Financial literacy

Low · Beginner

Core Motivations

Save for a Europe trip in 3 years.

Wants to feel smart in money conversations with peers. Prefers apps that work like Instagram — quick, visual, intuitive.

Pain Points

The Jargon Wall.

"Bear market," "equity," "CAGR" — terms that make her feel stupid. The boredom gap after setting up an SIP. The terror of losing money.

08 / 20
User Journey · Before

From confusion to abandonment.

Priya's six-panel arc — trigger, jargon wall, silence, drop-off — and how a gamified intervention rebuilds the habit loop.

Six-panel comic strip showing Priya's journey: hopeful download, jargon overwhelm, boredom and silence, dropping off, and finally being re-engaged through a gamified streak and badge system.
09 / 20
Competitive Lens

What dopamine-rich products do that finance apps don't.

C

CRED

Bill payments — the most boring task in fintech — wrapped in coin economies, scratch cards, and member tiers.

Takeaway: gamify the mundane. Reward the boring action.
🦉

Duolingo

Streaks, leagues, freezes, and an aggressive owl. Daily habit formation as a public, social commitment.

Takeaway: protect the streak. Loss aversion is louder than reward.
A

Acorns

Round-ups visualized as a growing tree. Micro-investing as ambient, visible accumulation — not as a chart.

Takeaway: make invisible progress visible. Show the climb.
10 / 20
The Reframe

Today

"I'm buying a stock."

After

"I'm levelling up my financial freedom."

HMW turn the silent waiting period of investing into a felt, daily sense of progress — without compromising sound long-term behavior?

11 / 20
Framework

Game elements,
borrowed.

Gamification = "the application of game-playing elements (point scoring, competition, rules of play) to other areas of activity to encourage engagement." From the toolbox, I picked the three that best fit a long-horizon habit:

🏆
Rewards
🔥
Streaks
🎯
Challenges
🎖️
Badges
⭐
Points
📈
Levels
🏅
Leaderboards
👤
Avatars

Highlighted: chosen for v1. Leaderboards intentionally cut — competitive financial comparison can backfire for novices.

12 / 20
The Solution

Three layers of progress, stacked.

Each layer answers a different psychological need — habit, achievement, identity — and feeds the next.

01

SIP Streaks

A monthly chain of checkmarks. Visual proof of consistency. Don't break the link.

Mechanism · Habit
02

Investment Milestones

Tiered coin badges from ₹5K to ₹5L, plus duration medals from 1 month to 1 year of SIP.

Mechanism · Achievement
03

Achievements Hub

A profile worth checking. Avatar ribbon, donut chart, streak module, badge case — all on one screen.

Mechanism · Identity
13 / 20
Pillar 01 · Streaks

Don't break
the chain.

A month-by-month visualization of every SIP installment, anchored by a longest-streak counter and a gentle nudge to enable autopay before the next due date.

The chain

Twelve monthly cells, filled month-by-month. Loss-aversion does the work — the chain is precious because it can break.

Autopay protection

"Protect yourself from losing your streak — turn on autopay." Habit gets infrastructure.

Lookahead reward

The next badge sits at the bottom of the page, half-unlocked. The brain pulls toward it.

SIP Streaks screen showing 11 months of consecutive checkmarks, total invested amount, longest streak callout, and the next achievement progress bar.
14 / 20
Pillar 02 · Milestones

Tangible proof
of progress.

Investment in India is denominated in lakhs, not thousands of dollars. The milestone system mirrors how Priya's parents talk about money — 5K, 25K, 50K, 1L, 2.5L, 5L — paired with duration medals for SIP consistency.

Two progression axes

Amount invested (coins) + duration of SIP (medals). Different users optimize different metrics.

Social proof, not leaderboard

"Unlocked by 83.1% of Groww users" — collective, not competitive. Belonging without ranking.

Indian-rupee native

The naming — "First Fives," "The Century," "Blue Chip" — borrows from cricket, not Wall Street.

A collection of six investment milestone badges: First Fives (5K), Silver Leagues (25K), Nifty-Fifty (50K), The Century (1 Lakh), Gold Reserve (2.5 Lakh), and Blue Chip (5 Lakh). Each badge shows unlock date and percentage of users who have achieved it.
15 / 20
Pillar 03 · Identity

A profile
worth checking.

All three layers come together on a single dashboard. Avatar ribbon, portfolio split, the streak preview, and a tappable badge case — built for daily glanceable check-ins, not weekly transactions.

"Growing since" ribbon

The avatar carries an ownable signal of tenure — your earliest SIP date wraps around your photo. A subtle status flex.

One screen, full context

Investment overview · streak preview · achievements row. No deep navigation needed.

The Achievements profile dashboard showing Ananya Singh's avatar with a 'Growing Since' ribbon, total investment of ₹2,45,000, an investment overview donut chart split into SIPs (71%), Mutual Funds (24%), and Stocks (6%), an 11-month SIP streak, and a row of unlocked achievement badges.
16 / 20
End to end

Twelve screens. One coherent journey.

From picking the first SIP to the achievement unlock moment — designed as a single connected loop, not a feature bolted onto an existing flow.

Grid showing all twelve key screens of the Gamified Groww flow, including the home screen, fund picker, autopay setup, achievement unlock moments, SIP Streaks page, achievements gallery, and milestone celebration screens.
17 / 20
The hero moment

From confusion
to confidence.

When Priya unlocks The Century — her first ₹1L invested — the app stops feeling like homework and starts feeling like a story she's writing.

"I just earned my Century badge — and I'm so close to fulfilling my investment goals. This actually makes sense, and it's fun."

— Priya, after 12 months

Achievement Unlocked screen showing The Century badge — a silver coin marking ₹1,00,000 invested. Subtitle reads: 'Your commitment is building serious momentum.' Unlocked by 83.1% of Groww users.
18 / 20
Live prototype

Try the full flow yourself.

An interactive Figma prototype walking through home → SIP setup → streak page → achievement unlock.

Open prototype →

// FIGMA · INTERACTIVE · DEMO
19 / 20
Outcomes

A design exploration —
with measurable hypotheses.

This is conceptual work. I haven't shipped to production users. But every pillar maps to a metric I'd want to validate, and a benchmark to learn from.

Hypothesis 01
D7 retention
↑ 12–18%
New users with streak module active will return more often in week 1. Baseline benchmark: Duolingo's streak feature lifted D7 by ~15%.
Hypothesis 02
SIP continuity
↑ 8–12%
Streak loss-aversion will reduce SIP cancellations between months 3–6 — the typical drop-off window.
Hypothesis 03
Sessions / user
2× per week
Achievements Hub becomes a reason to open the app outside of transactions. Glanceable, not transactional.
Next · Usability test with 8 first-time investors Next · A/B test streak module vs control Next · Trusted-circle social layer (post-v1)
20 / 20
Fin.

Thank
you.

Designed by

Shivangi Sudan

Product Designer · 10kdesigners Cohort 11 Capstone

Reach out

sudanshivangi@gmail.com
shivangisudan.framer.ai
linkedin.com/in/shivangisudan

Designed in 2 weeks · for users I'd want to actually help.