Award Badges: Gamification · Mobile · Enterprise UX
CREATING ACHIEVEMENTS
LEARNERS ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT
Schoox’s badges were digital noise nobody looked at. I rebuilt the mobile
awarding flow so managers could recognize great work the second they saw it;
turning an ignored feature into something learners actually care about.
Role
Product Designer; Mobile
UX/UI
Focus
Mobile badge awarding flow, search & filtering, confirmation states
Company
Schoox; Enterprise Learning Platform
Scope
Mobile awarding experience (badge creation deferred)
2 min read
Award Badges - redesigned mobile awarding flow
Built mobile-first and aligned to Schoox's broader design system; so
awarding a badge feels fast on a phone and premium to receive.
The Brief
Rewards that felt like noise, not recognition.
I rebuilt how learners get awarded on mobile; turning boring
corporate milestones into achievements that feel earned.
Managers saw the app's rewards as pointless digital noise. The workflow was so
clunky they couldn't hand out a badge in the moment a learner did something
great, and searching hundreds of badge types across thousands of employees on
a phone was unmanageable. Instead of making learners feel proud, awarding felt
like an administrative headache nobody wanted to touch.
Award Badges - mobile-first recognition
The Insight
Generic participation trophies don't work.
Research confirmed the hunch: learners ignore generic badges,
and managers only handed them out for mandatory HR
completions; never to celebrate great work in the moment.
Scarcity & Status
A badge only looks impressive on a profile if the UI makes a hard-earned, high-tier achievement look completely
different from a basic participation mark.
Awarding Velocity
Managers won't waste time on their phones. If searching thousands of employees and assigning a badge takes
more than a few taps, they abandon the feature.
Instant Feedback
Mobile moments are fast. The success state has to be visually undeniable so a manager knows the badge sent; and
doesn't fire it twice.
User Testing
The fixes came from watching
managers, not moving buttons.
Badge creation was deferred, so testing focused on the one thing that
mattered: how fast a manager could find and hand out a reward on a phone.
Awarding a whole team, not one tap at a time
Insight
Watching managers select 100+ learners one-by-one on a phone showed how tedious the
old layout really was.
Action
Rebuilt filtering for fast multi-selection; whole locations, org units, or custom groups get a
team reward in a couple of taps.
A confirmation managers actually trust
Insight
The old confirmation was so subtle managers re-tapped, unsure it sent; and accidentally
awarded duplicates.
Action
Built a bold, satisfying “Badge Awarded!” moment with the design-systems team, giving
instant confirmation and killing duplicates.
One list instead of three confusing tabs
Insight
Badges were split across “System,” “Corporate,” and “Group” tabs, forcing managers to
jump around to find one.
Action
Rolled everything into a single view with quick-tap filters up top, so managers narrow the list
instantly without switching screens.
Before / After · Badges Screen
Before
REVIEW Badges screen
After
REVIEW Badges screen
Impact
Badges became the core of
how managers run their teams.
All the experience enhancements to the badge experience resulted in increased
team engagement for our customers; Sport Clips successfully utilizes Schoox's
new badge experience and praises it, along with other gamification features.
"Our team members enjoy healthy competition, earning badges, and receiving recognition for training they've completed."
— Jonathan Sorber, Learning Development Manager at Sport Clips
Sport Clips developed a "level up" system where team members can participate in training activities to earn badges at five levels. These badges can be customized; the fifth level marks an individual as a "certified manager."
The takeaway I carried out: on a tight mobile screen, the hardest design work is
the invisible logic, not the layout. Being forced to cut badge creation was a gift;
it let me perfect the one flow managers actually use on the go, the real driver of
engagement.
ALONSO ROSADO
AI-first Product Designer shipping full
products, end to end.