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Dares, on Zoojoobe
Workplace wellness, designed for people who would rather not be challenged at all.
Zoojoobe was a corporate wellness app at Mindtree. Dares were one-to-one challenges between colleagues, capped at seven days. They went on to drive a meaningful jump in adoption.
§ Role
Design lead
§ Timeline
Six months, end-to-end
§ Team
4 — designer, two engineers, a PM
§ Year
2015
What a dare is
A dare is a one-to-one challenge between two workplace friends, lasting seven days. You set a health goal. You compete. At the end of the week, somebody wins and somebody owes a coffee.
That’s the elevator pitch. The truth is more interesting: it’s an excuse to interact with a colleague you don’t usually interact with, dressed up as a game.
Why it mattered
- 186,000+ dares exchanged over the life of the feature
- 11% lift in internal adoption at Mindtree
Wellness apps tend to die quietly inside companies. Dares kept Zoojoobe alive long enough to matter.
Process — the Double Diamond, in earnest
Discover (diverge)
We talked to colleagues about motivations, fears, and the actual social dynamics of an office floor. Why does someone not take a wellness challenge? Often: because they don’t want to be seen losing.
The Double Diamond, which we followed earnestly until we didn’t.
Define (converge)
Five problem statements, distilled from a much longer list. The good ones were about social risk, not health.
Develop (diverge)
A Crazy 8s session generated 17 distinct ideas. We picked four, wireframed them, and lived with them for a week before deciding.
Seventeen ideas, eight minutes, one sharpie.
Deliver (converge)
A prototype tested with internal users. Average score: 8.0+ on a scale of 0–10. We shipped.
The design, in one paragraph
A dare-creation flow built from a series of tile states — each step asking exactly one question (pick the colleague, pick the goal, pick the stakes, pick the reward). The seven-day timer ticked visibly on every screen, because urgency is half the fun.
The full dare-creation flow.
Step one. Pick someone you don’t usually talk to.
What I’d do differently now
In 2015 we shipped a single, opinionated dare format. With ten more years of patience I’d ship a smaller v1 — just goals between two people, nothing else — and let the format reveal itself before I designed it.
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