In this review, I will highlight the benefits of using of an application like Focus Tree. Also provide product suggestions, and explore the role of gamification in the app while maintaining a neutral perspective.

If I were to describe Focus Tree in three words, they would be: focus, gamification, and productivity.

What is Focus Tree?

Focus Tree is a focus app that enables users to spend less time on their phone and regain control of their attention.

Over the past decade, social media has become addictive, and our attention has become the lifeblood of these apps. Without our time and attention, these apps cannot thrive in their current models. We, as users, play a pivotal role in the survival of these applications.

Nevertheless, these applications also provide a platform to showcase your domain expertise and attract new customers. As consumers, they are a great place to explore new domains and subjects. However, it’s possible to develop addictions and lose a significant amount of time. In my opinion, the goal is to strike a balance with oneself.

What is the mission of Focus Tree?

The mission is simple: to help users stay focused and achieve their goals. Why? To build a healthy relationship with technology and their screen time.

Additionally, the mission is to provide a universal experience that caters to different types of individuals, from students to people in their forties, and even our grandparents.

Why do people seek to stay focused?

  • to achieve defined goals at work.

  • to be fully present during specific moments, such as a coffee meeting with friends, family gatherings, or team meetings.

  • to avoid or reduce distractions.

The problem statement: “I want to increase my productivity and maintain focus on my tasks”.

It’s a personal commitment; if you feel like you’re using your phone too much for any reason, using an app like Focus Tree can assist you by providing incentives to reduce your screen time.

The “how” is more complex because humans are adept at self-deception/lying to themselves and can work around systems designed to help them. This is where clever gamification and incentives become crucial for a product like Focus Tree.

Product Overview

To meet their needs., Focus Tree team provide some functionalities, let’s see what’s possible to do:

  1. Focus Session - restrict the usage of your phone
    • Setup focus session ranging from 10 to 60 min How can focus session fail?
      • exiting app for more than 5s
      • pressing the “give up” call to action
  2. Time tracker - visualize how much time you stay focus for x period
    • Currently, we can check our focus time history. In the future, we’ll be able to see the time spent on each of our phone’s applications. Moreover, we can improve monitoring the usage and track our progress toward our goals. Tagging sessions will also be available soon.
  3. Wallet - secure your Account
    • self-custody → that means user’s manage their keys pair, and they have the responsibility for it
    • utilizing biometrics hardware, provided by your device (Secure Enclave on iOS / StrongBox for Android)

Gamified functionalities and proprieties:

  1. Communities Garden - group of users
    • build a garden by adding a new Item everyday
  2. Tiles - app Items
    • users can deposit it in their own garden or community garden.
    • several themes and rarity
  3. Water - Stamina of your Tree
    • recharge by waiting a day or make your tree stronger
  4. Streak - a retention concept
  5. Focus Points - earn by focusing
    • how long your streak is
    • how long you focus
    • your tree’s level
  6. Leagues - compete with your ecosystem communities

Currently, it is more oriented for personal usage than for collective usage. However, it is possible to make full use of the application for the original purpose: not using your phone as much.

Some features announced on the roadmap, will improve the experience through different gamified mechanisms.

  • marketplace to trade Tiles and Tree NFT → improve users engagement
  • group focus session: follow your friends; group messaging → improve app retention
  • season and leaderboard for communities garden → active communities to incentivize their users

Gamification - the Key to Success

The gamification is a crucial point in an application like this. It’s important for users to feel and stay committed to accomplishing their goal.

It’s also a no-brainer: “ok I want to write 1h every day; I set 1h focus session and avoid all distractions.” Likewise, it’s looks like a simple task, but that avoids the temptation to just check your phone to see if you have received a new message.

  • By engaging gamification we can notice:

    • Tree XP level → day by day you reach a new level (suggestion link, can be cool to have new Tree design when we stage x Tree level)
    • Item reward every day if you focus

  • The leaderboard and the season (in the future) are a good way to create competition between different communities and motivate their members = Social engagement

  • Progress tracking is an important part of gamification.

Focus Tree provides it by a Time Tracking and can see how far they’ve come and what they’ve achieved, = motivating and satisfying

  • By enlarging the shared garden, user’s can be a member of communities = interaction; collaboration; “social reconnaissance.”

This is probably too much in this case, but it is true in one sense.

  • The retention is activated by:
    • Focus 1 time per day = 1 streak
    • focus 1 time per day = Tiles (Items) reveal

Users Flow

Is the steps for user’s to achieve their goals:

  1. setup focus time
  2. launch focus session
  3. stop using your phone After creating your account, it is simple to directly start your first focus sessions. Good point for the product usability.

Product Suggestions

Here I share some suggestions and ideas about the product:

  1. Schedule your focus time during the day

    1. setup when you want to not use your phone, for example: 2pm to 4pm or after 10 pm I would rather not be distracted.

    2. 5 min before, confirm you would like to be focus

    3. you still have the control, but you can push yourself by program focus time

  2. See my focus time average on the circle where we select the focus time

    • represent it with a “red point” and indicate the time

    • story: “here’s an indication of your average focus time”

  3. Focus room for team/student group

    • story: you’re in-person meeting with your team, and to restrict the distraction, everybody set up a focus session in your common garden

    • if someone used a phone, the session fails for everybody

  4. Open access to anybody to create their own garden and shared garden with default template

    • story: I want to share a garden with my family, I need to invite my family members

    • the garden admin set up a focus session → that sends a notification to each member, when they confirm it the focus session starts

  5. Show the % of time progress of the session

  6. Allow offline focus (if it is not possible, I’m curious to know why)

Here I share some suggestions and ideas about the gamification:

  1. Feed the garden animation with:

    • each of the members has a Bitmoji, and they walk in the garden

      • when someone opens the phone, their Bitmoji can say a short sentence like “Hi, come back to focus, this is not the moment to give up!”. The message can vary according to the number of times you check your phone

      • when the focus session is finished, show the Bitmoji + animation on the “congratulation screen”

    • animation a new item added in the garden (it’s a new day you do your first focus session, and you want to see which Item are newly added in the garden) (take inspiration of Polytopia flow after each turn)

    • highlight the garden Item when one is selected

  2. Add garden level while how many focus time it has

    • probably more useful for communities. They can encourage their members to focus and reach a new level. As incentive, that can unlock XP boost, tokens, special common Item for the garden.

  3. NFT metadata of the Tree changes when user’s/community garden reaches a new stage level

  4. Daily challenges

    • streak = focus > 10 min today
    • focus > 2 time today = earn x $FOCUS tokens for example

Fun features suggestions:

  1. Hardcore mode: when the user checks his phone x time → focus session is over
  2. Song animation during a focus session
  3. More achievements: focus after 10pm / reach x XP / have x Tree level > 20 / focus on the weekend; have x items in one garden Many possibilities to feed this section.

  • Allow users to write what they do during this focus time → use that for a week recap → improve weekly goals

  • can personalize tags, not only random tags (like if my weekly goal is to deep dive on x subject, I want to follow my progress)

With this suggestion, I’m trying to stay within the context of Focus Tree and rest according to what they’re currently building. It can be considered an “extension”.

Personal Experience

I have already adopted Focus Tree as my daily tool. I’ve been using it for 10 days now, and it’s a no-brainer. When I start a work session, I launch the app, hide my phone back on my laptop, and it’s done, I’m full focus. It’s a deal with me, and I know my issues with checking my phone regularly, so this is a tool to help me.

The product can stay like this, and I will continue to use it. In my opinion, the feature that would give me a complete experience would be the ability to schedule focus sessions.

Story: “I wake up at 8am, I want to create a habit and don’t use my phone before 9am.” Well, like my alarm setup, I’d like to be able to schedule my focus sessions automatically.

I hope the application stays as a “free-to-play” app in the future, with no experience limitation. Or if I need to pay something, it’s with an in-game asset like $FOCUS token that I would have gained with my focus time.