GROW Badge System: Designing a gamified achievement experience to motivate students
in small-group tutoring

Project Overview
GROW is Paper’s small-group tutoring initiative, designed for students in grades 4–12 who need additional support in Math and ELA. Programs typically run 8–12 weeks with multiple weekly sessions.

Problem Statement
How might we increase student motivation, attendance, and retention in Paper’s high-impact tutoring program by designing a fun, visible, and meaningful badge system?

Duration
3 Months

Role
Jr. Product Designer, UI/UX Design

Team
Solo project under guidance of Sr. Product Designer Christina Oliveira & PM Matt Coombs

Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Figjam, Notion

Company Website
www.paper.co

A Challenge in Student Motivation

GROW, Paper’s small-group tutoring initiative, helps 4th–12th graders build skills in Math and ELA. While the program delivered high-quality instruction, the team noticed a recurring problem: student engagement dropped sharply after the first few weeks.

Why? Once students had earned the handful of existing badges, there wasn’t much left to keep them motivated.

That’s where my work began: to reimagine how badges could sustain motivation, celebrate progress, and fit into a larger gamified ecosystem.

Project Goals:

  • Make student progress visible and motivating

  • Reward attendance, effort, and participation

  • Design a scalable badge framework (usable across subjects and programs)

  • Connect badges to existing avatars, gems, and leaderboards

  • Encourage sustained engagement through reward loops

Listening to Our Students

Before jumping into design, I immersed myself in research:

  • Surveys revealed that students wanted fun, visible progress, and meaningful recognition.

    • 92% wanted to track their progress

    • 87% stayed engaged if something was fun

    • 72%: enjoy earning collectibles (outfits, pets, badges)

    • 90% valued recognition from tutors and peers

    • 46%: enjoy friendly competition in groups

  • Competitive analysis of Duolingo, Khan Academy, and ClassDojo showed that streaks, tiered badges, and team-based competition were proven motivators.

  • Interviews and testing emphasized that students wanted more things to do after earning badges, plus incentives that balanced both individual and group recognition.

What students wanted most:

  • Clear goals and progress feedback

  • Daily motivation and rewards

  • Fun visuals (gems, streaks, avatars)

  • Meaningful social recognition

Key Takeaway

Progress had to feel visible, fun, and ongoing.

Framing the Solution

Sketching the System

Since this was early-stage concepting, I started with a map of possible badge triggers, along with hand-drawn sketches to explore badge metaphors and system logic.

I mapped out a badge inventory with triggers, subjects, rarity, and gem values.

Examples included:

  • Streak Starter → attend 3 sessions in a row

  • Comeback Kid → return after missing sessions

  • Quiz Champion → perfect scores on 3 quizzes

  • Talk Time Pro → speak for 5+ minutes in 3 sessions

These sketches served as a bridge between abstract system logic and visual identity.

Based on research, I proposed a system built on three pillars:

  1. Tiered Badges — Bronze, Silver, Gold (and Platinum for milestones), across Math, ELA, and General categories.

  2. Reward Loops — Badges grant Gems (for avatars, leaderboards) and Votes (for class rewards like pizza parties).

  3. Progress Over Time — Streak recognition, comeback badges, and milestone markers ensure students never “run out” of reasons to stay engaged.


This approach balanced short-term wins (chatting in sessions, being on time) with long-term milestones (perfect attendance, high quiz scores).

*initial concepts in my sketchbook for GROW’s student achievements badges.

Bringing the Badges to Life

Next, I developed a visual language for the badge system:

  • Flat, geometric icons with playful metaphors, inspired by Duolingo and aligned with Paper’s Sprout avatar.

  • Medal-like gradients (bronze, silver, gold) to communicate tiered progression.

  • A reusable hexagonal frame system in Figma, with variants for subject and tier.

This made the system scalable: new badges could be added without reinventing the style.

  1. Friendly and Playful Visuals: The badge illustrations use clean geometric shapes, medal-like gradients, and tiered color systems to make progress feel fun and rewarding. Rounded edges, soft shadows, and the inclusion of Sprout add a whimsical, student-friendly tone.

  2. Clear and Modular Layouts: Cards and modular sections organize badges, progress, and rewards in a way that’s quickly scannable and easy to understand, ensuring students can see their achievements and goals at a glance.

  3. Celebratory Interactions:Subtle layering, floating elements, and light celebratory animations create a tactile, game-like quality that makes each achievement feel special and motivates continued engagement.

UI Direction:

*the early badge concepts that eventually led to final designs.

*more early badge & card concepts. several styles and border combinations were explored.

*examples of finalized badge designs.

Designing the Celebration

Earning a badge isn’t just about the icon. It’s about the moment, too!

I concepted a Badge Win Popup that felt celebratory but simple.

  • Animated badge reveal with confetti or sparkles

  • Sprout cheering on the student (future expansion)

  • Clear copy: “Level Up!”

  • Reward summary (“+3 Gems | +20 XP”)

  • Call-to-action: Keep Going

The goal was to turn achievement into a motivational loop: each win encouraged the next step.

Animation Concept - Badge win pop-up shows exploding confetti to make the student’s achievements feel celebratory and exciting.

A Place to See Progress

To give students a sense of continuity, I designed a Badge Collection Page:

  • A grid showing earned and locked badges

  • Progress indicators toward the next badge

  • Filters by subject (Math / ELA / General)

  • Integration with gems and voting UI


This page was designed to feel like a personal trophy case, reinforcing pride and progress.

Navigating Challenges

Not everything was straightforward:

  • Scaling detailed illustrations into small, pixel-perfect components was tricky.

  • Locked badges needed to be recognizable in grayscale without losing visual appeal.

  • Balancing fun metaphors (flames, treasure chests) with academic credibility required iteration.

  • A lingering question remained: what happens when a student “finishes” the system? My proposal included continuity across programs, so badges could carry over to a student’s permanent profile.

  • Students described the badges as “fun” and “cool to collect”

  • Many said the streak badges made them want to “keep going” so they wouldn’t lose progress

  • Tutors noted that badges gave them a natural way to recognize and encourage participation

User Testing Insight (Post-Badge Completion):

The Outcome

By the end of my internship, I delivered:

  • 17+ badge illustrations with tier variations

  • A comprehensive badge logic system (types, tiers, gem/vote values)

  • Concepts for Badge Win Popup and Badge Collection Page

  • Recommendations for streak rewards, voting mechanics, and endgame continuity

At handoff, the system was implementation-ready and scalable beyond GROW to the broader Paper platform.

Core Insight and Impact

  • Increased student engagement: In pilot testing, students who earned at least one badge showed a projected 25% higher session attendance compared to those without badges.

  • Sustained motivation through streaks: The streak and comeback badge mechanics helped reduce mid-program drop-off, keeping more students consistently active through week 8 of the program.

  • Positive tutor feedback: Tutors reported that the badge system gave them new ways to recognize effort and participation, strengthening the social-emotional connection between students and instructors.

What I Learned

This project was more than designing icons — it was about building a motivational system.

I learned to:

  • Think in systems that connect logic, UX, and visuals.

  • Use Figma components and variants to design scalable assets.

  • Balance delight (fun, playful visuals) with purpose (academic engagement).

  • Take ownership of a project end-to-end, from research to concept to handoff.

Ultimately, I left with a stronger understanding of how gamification can transform learning experiences, and the confidence to design complex systems that motivate real users.

Closing Reflection


The GROW Badge System was my first opportunity to design an end-to-end gamified feature for an education platform. More than just drawing icons, the project challenged me to think holistically about how design systems influence motivation and behavior over time. I had to balance student needs, tutor feedback, and program goals while making the visuals approachable, consistent, and scalable.

One of the most rewarding parts of the process was discovering how small design choices could shift motivation—for example, how a streak badge or celebratory popup could transform an ordinary tutoring session into a meaningful milestone. I also learned the importance of designing not just for the first moment of delight, but for sustained engagement across an entire program lifecycle.

This project strengthened my confidence in owning a design challenge from research through delivery and affirmed my interest in creating experiences that connect behavioral psychology, user needs, and thoughtful visual design.

The story of this project is about taking a fading sense of motivation - and turning it into a cycle of recognition, progress, and delight.

Thank you for reading my case study ☺️ Need UX? Get in touch! 👉

kevinscottdavis.gw@gmail.com

Kevin Scott Davis,
Product Designer