Dopamine Tasks

Giving Small Tasks a Visible Result

Clearing a desk or finishing a routine piece of work rarely produces much feedback beyond a checked box. Dopamine Tasks explores what happens when those small completions also move something visible: an experience bar fills, a level advances, and a fictional boss loses health.

The project borrows the language of role-playing games to make a task list more playful. Its name describes that design direction, rather than a measured effect on brain chemistry. The prototype demonstrates an interaction model; it does not establish that rewards improve productivity or wellbeing.

From Checklist to Quest List

The demo starts with sample tasks and lets visitors add their own title, category, and difficulty. Housework, work, wellness, and creative tasks share the same list, with filters for finding a category or checking what remains unfinished. Repeatable tasks can be returned to the active list through the daily chores control.

Completing a task awards XP and coins while contributing damage to the active boss. Difficulty changes the base reward, and combos and timed sprints can increase it. These systems make accumulated activity visible without needing a separate reporting screen.

Feedback Around Completion

Canvas particles and floating reward text mark a completed task. Optional audio is generated through the Web Audio API, while screen shake has its own control. Both sound and shake start disabled in the embedded demo so visitors can choose those effects.

Crates and a spinning reward wheel introduce random outcomes alongside the predictable task rewards. Collectibles appear in an inventory, and all currency exists inside the demo. Item descriptions and perks are prototype game content, not promises of real-world benefits or a fully implemented equipment system.

Short sprint timers offer another way to use the list: pick a limited period, work through a few tasks, and receive a temporary reward multiplier. The timer runs in the page and is not a background scheduling service.

Keeping Progress in the Browser

React holds the task list, player statistics, and boss state. These are saved to local storage when the browser permits it, so returning to the same browser can restore progress. There is no account or cross-device synchronisation; clearing site data removes the saved state.

The embedded engine mounts after the surrounding project page has hydrated. This keeps browser-specific saved progress out of the server-rendered page and lets the project write-up remain available before the interactive demo starts.

What the Prototype Explores

The central question is whether a task's completion can feel more tangible when several small signals respond together. Rewards, visible progress, and a fictional opponent provide one possible answer. Testing that experience with people, including whether the extra stimulation helps or distracts them, remains separate work from building the mechanics.