72% of North Americans think work-life is important yet, Canada ranks 20th out of the top 38 developed nations when it comes to having a good work-life balance. Since 2000 Canada gradually gained about 326,000 people having a second job. Having second jobs in Canada is high and time for leisure and personal care has gone down.

Other countries are pushing regulations to have a proper work-life balance, which is not happening in Canada.

In Canada, it is mostly the school system that is improving the work-life balance, but we see that young people are willing to sacrifice their free time for work and young people do not care about being contacted off-hours.

Proper work-life balance means less stress which can increase productivity and decrease sickness and suicide rates.

Designing a mobile application that helps users ages 18 to 35, who are looking for a way to improve their work-life balance by using gamification task lists.

By letting the user have a virtual friend (whose name is Tomo) while finishing their task list they will see how their accomplishments and non-achievement affect Tomo’s health and mood, negative or positive.

When the user sees what effects happen to Tomo they will start feeling empathic to it and see a reflection on how it is affecting their health and mood.

The project was split into four stages, two focused on secondary and primary research and the last two focused on development. Each stage did have hard deadlines. I made sure the final two weeks of each stage were focused on testing.

Data from Stats Canada shows that there is a growth of people having second jobs, and at the same time, leisure and personal care were going down.

Canada is ranked 20/38 when it comes to work-life balance when it comes to how important is work-life balance it was voted to be important. A study showed that 72% of people cared about work-life balance, but at the same time young people do not care about being contacted off-hours.

‍When it came to the Canadian school system, it showed that they do care about students' work-life balance by having breaks middle of the semesters. In my studies, I found out why schools have breaks. When looking around the world I saw that other countries are pushing regulations to have a proper work-life balance lifestyle.

After interviewing a wide age range, I discovered that the older the interviewee the better their work-life balance. When asked why those who are willing to sacrifice their free time for work, the responses were they want to move up the corporate ladder or because of the hustle culture movement.

When comparing to those in the same age range and occupations those with a better work-life balance were less stressed, healthy and in a better mood overall. Some of the interviewees who had a bad work-life balance did not see it as important or were aware that they lacked work-life balance.

The age range from both secondary and primary research showed that the main target audience is anyone between ages 18 to 35. The occupations can range from students to business owners, anyone who had a hustle thinking.

Based on researching an application that helps users be aware and be in control of their work-life lifestyle. The application had a focus on non-work-related tasks when they are out of work. The users also needed a way to see how their health and mood are improving. The desired reaction is to have people who are willing to sacrifice their time for work to understand how important it is to have a proper work-life balance in life.

The application algorithm is designed to look at the users' previous results and compare them to the current task list. From there it can compare what has been done and not been done in the past. With that information, it will determine the user what is important to do.

The user will interact with the application in three ways. The first way is within the application and setting up and checking off the task list. The second way is notifications to the users so they are aware of what tasks should be done. Lastly, the user can see a progress bar on how they are doing.

I decided to create an application where you take care of a pet or a friend, then changed to a friend reminding you. Going back and forth I decided to call my application Friend. I did a bit more research and I wanted a cute word that means friend and found the word Tomo which means friend in Japanese.

The feedback I got was to have an incentive to come back to the application. So I created something cute since studies have shown that people tend to take care of something cute.

The application will let users create a task list, and from there they will get notifications based on the task list. If the user opens the application it will show Tomo doing an animation based on the task list. Once done a task the user can check off that they finished and end of the day the user will get results on how Tomo’s health is doing and that will be reflective of the user's health.

From there it was mostly refined, tested and repeat.

Created a Progressive Web Application. It is a mobile version of a website on an application.

‍I did a week of beta testing and got positive results. Few remarks, such as in feature to add in the future and how beneficially this was to the users.