Knowt is an online study platform that offers students AI-powered flashcards and quizzes from their notes. The platform is used by students across all grades looking for efficient, flexible ways to review material across any subjects.

When I joined the team, Knowt had a solid foundation of core study features, but student engagement was inconsistent. Many users signed up, used the platform briefly—often around exam time—and then went inactive, revealing a pattern of sporadic, task-based use rather than sustained learning.

Knowt offered students useful tools — but the experience was missing the emotional hooks and behavioral scaffolding that turn one-time use into recurring behavior. Studying felt like a means to an end: once students got what they needed, there was no compelling reason to stay or return.

What was lacking wasn’t features — it was feelings: progress, momentum, and reward. Without feedback loops or incentives, sessions felt isolated rather than connected parts of a larger journey. There was no sense of continuity, no acknowledgment of effort, and no system nudging users toward consistency.

With clear signals from user research and competitive analysis, the value of gamification was undeniable. Platforms like Duolingo and Quizlet were successfully using rewards, streaks, and progress tracking to keep learners engaged. The challenge wasn’t whether to use gamification—but how to integrate it meaningfully into Knowt’s study experience.

With gamification as our direction, we needed to translate broad concepts into features that made sense for Knowt’s study experience. We focused on four core mechanisms—Streaks, XP, Achievements, and a Rewards Currency—each designed to address a different aspect of motivation: habit, progress, recognition, and incentive.

These core features weren’t chosen just because they were popular elsewhere — they mapped directly to the motivation gaps uncovered in research. Our aim was to design systems that felt rewarding, without overwhelming students or distracting from the core task of learning.

With our four core features—Streaks, XP, Achievements and Rewards Currency—defined, the next step was to bring them to life through thoughtful, student-centered design. We wanted these systems to feel integrated, not gamified for the sake of it. Our goal was to motivate students without distracting them from their learning goals.

We approached design as an iterative process: sketching ideas, building quick prototypes, and observing real user behavior. Each feature was rolled out in lightweight phases, allowing us to measure what genuinely moved the needle. For example, we started with a simple streak tracker, then layered in motivational nudges and celebratory animations once we validated that students were more likely to return daily.

Importantly, we focused on emotional feedback. Every touchpoint—earning XP, unlocking an achievement, continuing a streak—was designed to provide just enough reinforcement to create momentum, without overwhelming the experience. It wasn’t about making studying “fun” in a gamified way; it was about making it feel rewarding enough to come back tomorrow.

We started by designing a streak system that rewarded users for studying on consecutive days. We kept the UI simple—a persistent flame icon and a streak counter on the homepage—to ensure it motivated without distracting. Early A/B testing showed promising results: users with streaks were 2× more likely to return the next day. We iterated on the visuals and added subtle reminders to protect active streaks, further reinforcing the habit loop.