Our app prod.ly recently got the ability to award achievements to users for a variety of activities. Now, achievements have little impact if you cannot translate those into a rush of dopamine for the winning user. To achieve that, we are planning to have a pop up show as soon as the achievement is awarded, congratulating the user.
From psychology we know that if something is colourful and has animation it has a larger emotional impact than something that is static and B/W. One ingredient that is often used to heighten the effect are what I call “Hero Rays”. In this tutorial I am showing how I achieved them.