Ether AI
Game Design
BackGround
In response to the growing mental health challenges faced by Gen Z, marked by alarming statistics such as 91% experiencing stress and 23% to unmanageable levels, the Ether app was conceived as a revolutionary approach to wellness tailored specifically for this generation.
Ether combines the immersive appeal of gaming with practical, daily mental health support, leveraging AI to personalize experiences and foster a sense of community among users. The app's development process was deeply informed by extensive research into Gen Z’s digital habits, preferences for authenticity and personalization, and their inclination towards interactive and gamified content. Ether aims to redefine wellness support for young adults by integrating daily quests, mood-based activities, and community features, making mental health management engaging and accessible.
Interviews & Diary Study Synthesis
Audience Age Range: 18-25
Diverse Lifestyles: College students, young professionals, freelancers, and those navigating post-college transitions.
Financial Variability: Some rely on parental support, others are fully self-sufficient.
Common Challenge: Many struggle with unstructured free time, decision-making, and managing “supposed to” expectations.
Key Differentiators vs. Existing Wellness Apps
AI-Powered Personalization: Tailored recommendations adapt to mood and stress levels.
Holistic Wellness Tracking: Combines stress, sleep, activity, and nutrition insights.
AI-Guided Journaling: Smart prompts foster emotional reflection and growth.
Key Differentiators vs. Existing Wellness Apps
Social Interaction Features: Community forums and peer support for shared experiences.
Empathetic AI Companion: Emotional intelligence built into AI responses.
Mood-Based Activity Suggestions: Contextual recommendations for stress relief.
Key Insights
Gen Z Stress & Coping Mechanisms
Diverse Stressors: Financial concerns, relationships, academics, job pressures, and loss of structured resources post-college.
Preferred Coping Methods: Meditation, exercise, social interaction, entertainment (music, games, streaming), and journaling.
Wellness Perception: Holistic—mental, physical, emotional, and social well-being all matter.
Competitive Analysis Feature Breakdown
The Research
Research Methods
Surveys: Gathered quantitative insights on Gen Z stressors, wellness habits, and app preferences.
Diary Study (via dscout): 3-day real-time qualitative study with participants logging mood, stressors, and wellness activities through written entries, photos, and videos.
Competitive Analysis: Assessed existing wellness apps, identifying gaps and opportunities in the market.
Summary of Outcomes: Identified gaps in current wellness apps.Defined core stressors and coping mechanisms for Gen Z.Established a roadmap for an AI-driven, holistic wellness platform.Validated demand for personalized, adaptive mental health tools.
User Needs & Desired Features
AI-Powered Personalization: Users want adaptive support based on mood, stress levels, and personal input.
Comprehensive Wellness Tracking: Mood logging, stress tracking, and progress insights are valuable.
Diverse Coping Strategies: A mix of mindfulness practices, physical activities, and relaxation techniques.
User Needs & Desired Features
Interactive Journaling: AI-powered prompts to encourage reflection and emotional processing.
Social Connection: Peer support groups, anonymous forums, and counselor interactions are crucial.
Holistic Health Guidance: Nutrition, sleep, exercise, and mental health practices should be integrated.
Empathetic AI: Users want emotional support without judgment.
Training the AI Guides
To train our AI advisors to be the snarky, empathetic, and relatable guides Gen Z wants, we’re running a structured test with 15 participants (ages 20-25), generating 900+ sample conversations. Users will access the app via TestFlight and interact with three AI guides across five distinct categories, engaging in 60 conversations each. These dialogues will refine the AI’s tone, humor, and ability to offer practical, emotionally intelligent advice. Data from these interactions will fuel the AI’s learning process, ensuring it responds naturally, understands context, and provides meaningful support—essentially becoming the go-to digital advisor for stress, relationships, and life’s tricky moments.
Early Prototypes & Testing
Problem statement:
Emerging adults are experiencing extreme stress and a lack of accessible and personally relevant support in navigating and feeling successful in daily life.
Hypothesis:
Conversational AI with personas that respond to a user’s specific immediate concerns with comfort and guidance will provide immediate relief for highly stressed gen-z who seek personalized, relational solutions.
If we celebrate user’s progress and reinforce through gamification we will help users feel successful and return to our app as a source of daily affirmation.
MVP Features and Beyond
To define the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) for our AI-powered wellness app, we focused on essential features that would deliver immediate value while ensuring a seamless, low-effort user experience. Our goal was to strike the right balance between engagement and simplicity—making it easy for users to receive guidance, track their wellness, and build healthy habits without feeling overwhelmed.
MVP Development Approach
We prioritized features that aligned with our research insights on Gen Z’s stress management needs and their digital behavior. The core criteria for inclusion were:
Ease of Access – Users should quickly log in and engage without friction.
Conversational AI as the Core Experience – AI guides needed to feel snarky, empathetic, and genuinely helpful.
Personalization with Minimal Input – Users shouldn't have to type too much or manually track progress; the app should adapt to them.
Gamification & Micro-Interactions – Engagement should be driven by small, effortless interactions, making wellness feel rewarding.
Supportive, Not Overwhelming – Users should receive proactive, contextual nudges rather than be burdened with too many options.
---------
Key MVP Features
Sign-Up & Onboarding – Simple and intuitive, ensuring new users understand the app’s value immediately.
Conversational AI – Users can chat with AI guides who provide stress-relief strategies, wellness recommendations, and personalized insights.
Conversational Memory – AI retains past interactions for continuity, making responses feel personalized over time.
Micro-Interactions – One-tap choices like “This or That”, daily habit check-ins, and quick affirmations to keep users engaged with minimal effort.
Smart Notifications & Follow-Ups – Timely reminders that feel supportive, not intrusive—ensuring users return when they need help.
Gamification Elements – Small milestones, rewards, and habit-tracking to reinforce engagement and make progress feel tangible.
Personalized Recommendations – AI dynamically suggests stress-relief activities, content, and exercises based on user interactions and preferences.
Basic Data Analytics & Security – Ensuring privacy and tracking engagement metrics to refine and improve the experience.
---------
Expanding Beyond MVP
Post-launch, we plan to incorporate richer social features, deeper AI personalization, and integrations like calendar sync for stress prediction, iMessage-style chat interactions, and AI-generated journaling prompts. These will build on the foundation of the MVP while keeping the user experience intuitive, adaptive, and effortlessly engaging.
This focused MVP ensures we deliver real value to users while gathering critical insights to refine and expand the product based on real-world interactions. 🚀
Game Design Workshop
Bringing Stakeholders Along: Understanding Game Design vs. App Design
To successfully develop our app, we had to guide stakeholders through a fundamental mindset shift—moving from traditional app development, which prioritizes efficiency, to a game-based experience that emphasizes engagement, discovery, and emotional connection. Many were accustomed to designing for quick task completion, where friction is minimized. However, in a gamified system, productive friction—challenges, choices, and rewards—drives long-term engagement.
Without this understanding, there was a risk of stakeholders pushing for features that made the experience too transactional, undermining the immersion we were trying to create.
Why This Shift Mattered
Unlike standard apps where success is measured by task completion and speed, game-based experiences rely on motivation, progression, and emotional investment. We had to show that engagement wasn’t about how fast users completed something but how deeply they connected with it. Features like earning rewards, unlocking new levels, and evolving AI guides weren’t just extras—they were the mechanics that kept users coming back. Progress had to feel meaningful, not just functional.
Through workshops, we helped stakeholders understand that this wasn’t just a tool—it was an interactive journey, designed to make wellness an experience rather than a chore.
High Fidelity Testing
& Soft launch
After refining our MVP through research and iteration, we moved into high-fidelity development and expanded testing to friends and family. Using dscout for structured testing, we assigned test participants different tasks to complete within the app, allowing us to observe real-world interactions and refine the experience.
This phase was crucial in validating our AI guides—ensuring their tone, relatability, and responses resonated with Gen Z users.
With these insights, we launched a soft release in the App Store, allowing us to gather live user data while fine-tuning pricing, promotional strategies, and AI training.
The soft launch helped us refine conversational flows, improve engagement loops, and optimize the AI’s responses to better reflect user needs. By continuously iterating based on early user behavior, we shaped the app into a truly responsive, Gen Z-friendly wellness tool, setting the stage for broader adoption.
Reflections & Learnings
Developing this app was a deep dive into balancing technology, psychology, and playfulness—and one of the biggest takeaways was just how essential personality is to engagement. The AI guides became the heart of the experience, and making them feel quirky, relatable, and empathetic (without being robotic or overly scripted) was both our greatest success and our biggest ongoing challenge.
Authenticity is everything for Gen Z, and the moments that resonated most were when the AI felt like a friend rather than an instructor. Moving forward, continuing to fine-tune their personalitieswill be key to keeping users engaged.
Another major learning was the importance of progression mechanics and habit formation—just launching a gamified app isn’t enough; the experience needs to evolve over time. While the Ether Expanse journey map gave users a compelling entry point, we need to expand long-term collection elements, unlockables, and evolving visuals to keep motivation high beyond the initial novelty. Similarly, we discovered that daily engagement can’t feel like a chore—the best results came from unexpected, playful interactions rather than repetitive loops.
What I’d Do Differently
Start AI Training Earlier: AI personality design turned out to be far more finicky than expected—balancing humor, depth, and natural interaction took longer than anticipated. Next time, I’d run AI development in parallel with UX design rather than later in the process.
Align Stakeholders on Gamification Sooner: Many late-stage adjustments could have been avoided with earlier education on game UX principles—gamification isn’t just “adding points” but creating meaningful motivation.
Emphasize Longevity from the Start: The MVP set a solid foundation, but a true “player journey” needs long-term investment—evolving environments, personalized progress, and new surprises to keep users engaged beyond the first few months.
Final Takeaway
This wasn’t just about building an app—it was about creating an experience. The best moments came from embracing humor, weirdness, and playfulness, making the app feel like something users want to return to, not just something they should return to. The future lies in deepening AI personality, making engagement feel more organic, and ensuring the experience grows alongside its users—because in the end, fun and emotional connection are the real retention drivers. 🚀
