Playful Pause
A playful micro-experience designed to help people reset — without pressure, performance, or productivity guilt.
AI Hackathon · 2025
Project Overview
Playful Pause is a small interactive experiment created during an AI hackathon. I designed and built the experience using only AI-powered tools, to create a wellness moment that feels light, optional, and human.
Rather than encouraging productivity or optimisation, the project explores what it means to pause — without expectation or effort.
Role
UX Designer
Tools
ChatGPT, Lovable, Github, Cursor, Claude, Vercel
Timeline
4 days
00
Problem
Many wellness products unintentionally turn rest into another form of work. They rely on goals, streaks, and metrics, which can make relaxation feel like something to perform.
What people often want instead is simple: a moment of relief. A pause that doesn’t ask for focus, discipline, or improvement.
The question became: What if a moment of rest asked nothing from you at all?
Solution
Playful Pause is a lightweight wellness experience designed to help users feel more relaxed in under three minutes.
There are no timers, scores, or expectations — just simple, playful interactions that invite users to slow down and disengage briefly, on their own terms.
01
The Process
I use the Lean UX method:
Think → Build → Test → Iterate
Rather than over-planning, I focused on quickly exploring ideas, observing how they felt in use, and refining based on emotional response rather than feature completeness.
02
Ideation & Building
To start off, I made a hypothesis that If breaks feel light and effortless, people are more likely to engage. I envisioned Playful Pause to be a safe haven and a fun quick escape from reality,
Moodboard created with ChatGPT
Playful Pause v1 created in Lovable
03
Validation & Insights
60% of users reported feeling more relaxed immediately after trying Playful Pause.
Interactive, tactile moments were consistently the most engaging
Sound-based interactions stood out as especially calming and memorable
Users also wanted gentle guidance to feel supported, but not so much that it felt prescriptive.
05
Closing Reflections
Takeaways
This project reinforced a simple but powerful idea: good design doesn’t always need to do more. Sometimes, the most thoughtful choice is to step back and let the experience breathe.
Next Steps
Conduct a new round of testing with 5 fresh users
Extend flows for remaining activities
Replace underperforming prompts with more delightful ones