The human part of work should be fun

AI is taking the tedious parts out of work. It drafts the first version, fills in the form, files the ticket, and sums up the meeting you skipped. The list gets longer every month.

What's left is you. Someone still has to decide what the email says, explain the bug, give the feedback and answer the question. More and more, that's the whole job: you say what you want, and software does the rest.

Here's what we think follows from that. If the human part of work is what's left, it should be the best part of the day. It should be fun.

So we built Aqua Pet.

Meet Aqua Pet

Aqua Pet is a small pixel creature that lives on your desktop, right where the Floating Bar used to sit. It's part of Aqua Voice on Mac and Windows, on every plan, including Free.

When you talk, it holds up the bar and listens. When you stop, it throws your words into whatever you're typing in. It reacts to what you say. And every word you dictate counts toward something.

You	Your pet
Talk	Holds up the bar and listens
Stop talking	Throws your words into the text field
Say "thanks, Priya"	Sends hearts
Mention coffee	Steams
Swear	Washes its mouth out with soap
Say its name	Perks up
Dictate 1,000 words in a day	Gets a gold star
Go quiet for two minutes	Dozes off

It starts with three throws (Word Chip, Aqua Splash and Rainbow) and earns the rest. A Fireball takes a 75-day streak. A Paper Plane takes a thousand messages sent with Send It. A Portal takes five friends.

Everything else works the same way. There are 111 things to unlock: hats, glasses, things to hold, colors, suits and throws. A Party Hat arrives in your first hundred words. The Crown takes a million. A few are secret, and in the app the next unlock stays blurred until you earn it. Your pet's level is simply how many you've earned.

Why make work fun?

We'd turn the question around: why not?

For most of the history of office software, the hard part of the job was the job. Tools were serious because the work was. You typed because the words had to get into the computer somehow, and nobody expected typing to feel like anything.

That's changing quickly. A lot of what used to fill a day is now a request: write this, fix that, summarize this thread, draft a reply. Software does more and more of what comes after the request. The request is the part that's still you, and more and more, you say it out loud. That's why Aqua exists in the first place. You talk faster than you type.

When the human part of work shrinks to the parts only people can do (deciding, explaining, persuading, caring how something lands), it would be strange to leave those as the dullest minutes of the day. Software got the busywork. People should get the fun.

There's a practical case too. When something feels good to do, you do more of it, and you do it with more care. If the most valuable thing you bring to a project is now what you say, saying it deserves a little delight.

Fun isn't the opposite of serious. It's the opposite of tedious.

What games already know

Games are, in a way, very repetitive work. You press the same few buttons thousands of times, and people do it for fun anyway, because good games get a few things right:

• Everything answers you. Press a button and something happens, right away, every time.
• Progress is visible. You can see how far you've come and what's next.
• Effort turns into things. Hats, stars, gear: proof of what you did, worth showing off.
• There are surprises. Secrets, rare drops, the move you didn't know existed.
• There's a character. Someone to root for, who seems to be rooting for you.

Work software has almost none of this. You can send a hundred messages a day, and nothing answers you except more messages. Your effort doesn't add up to anything you can see. There are no secrets in your inbox.

Aqua Pet is our attempt to bring those five things to the part of work you do with your voice. The throw is the answer. The level and the stars are the progress. The closet is the loot. The secrets are the surprises. And the pet is the character.

Why a pet, and not a progress bar? Because a progress bar can't be proud of you.

Gamification, minus the bad parts

"Gamification" has a reputation, and it earned it. Too often it has meant points and leaderboards bolted onto work nobody wanted to do, to squeeze more of it out of people. Badges for compliance training. Streaks that guilt you. Rankings your manager watches.

We think the problem was never the fun. It was what the fun was for. So we gave ourselves rules.

1. It never asks for more work. Everything is earned by things you were doing anyway: talking, writing, replying. There's nothing to grind, and no reason to dictate a single word you don't need.
2. It never takes anything away. Miss a day and your current streak starts over, but streak unlocks count your longest run. Every item you earn stays yours.
3. Nothing important is locked. Unlocks are cosmetic. Aqua works exactly the same with the pet on or off, and there's no store.
4. Your work stays yours. The pet reacts only to what you dictate, never to what you type, and the matching happens on your computer. Leaderboards are for paid plans, and Privacy Mode keeps you off them.
5. It knows when to leave you alone. It makes no sound of its own. It naps when you go quiet. Right-click it to hide it for a minute, an hour or until you bring it back. And unlike the office assistants of the '90s, it has no suggestions.

A day with a pet

Here's an ordinary Tuesday:

• 9:02. You give your standup update out loud. Your pet holds up the bar while you talk, then throws the words into Slack.
• 9:40. "Thanks, Priya, this is perfect." Hearts.
• 10:15. "Coffee first, then the deck." Steam.
• 11:30. You pass 1,000 words for the day. A gold star appears over its head.
• 12:30. Lunch. Two quiet minutes and it dozes. Ten and it's asleep.
• 1:05. You start talking again. It wakes right up.
• 3:00. A long email in Realtime mode. Your pet holds every word up as you say it, and it starts to struggle. Keep going long enough and you'll find a secret.
• 5:45. Something unlocks. You didn't know it was coming. That's the point.

How to get it

Aqua Pet is part of Aqua Voice on Mac and Windows, on every plan, including Free. Pro adds the Aqua Halo, and Max adds the Laser Visor, which your pet wears while your plan includes them. Realtime mode, where your pet holds your words up live, is included with Max.

To turn it on, open Aqua Voice, click Pet in the sidebar and switch on Aqua Pet. It takes the place of the Floating Bar. You can name it there too, and it will notice when you say its name.

The iPhone and Android apps don't have a pet, but signing in on them unlocks the Silver Phone and the Green Phone.

You were going to work today anyway

The tedious parts of your job are going away. What's left is the part that was always yours: what you think, what you decide, what you say. We'd like that part to feel good.

You were going to work today anyway. Might as well level up while you do.

Meet Aqua Pet or download Aqua Voice.