About us (Our Mission)
Our Vision
Upmark is a community-driven app designed to motivate people to get outside and achieve real-life goals. Built by chaosCode, we believe that personal achievement becomes more meaningful when shared with others.
Why We Built Upmark
We created Upmark to inspire people to be more active and engaged in their communities. By tracking real-world accomplishments—from hiking trails to volunteering initiatives—users can celebrate their progress and inspire those around them.
The Power of Community Comparison
At Upmark, we know that seeing what others accomplish can be more than just a comparison its a source of motivation, a push to grow, and a reminder that every small step counts toward achieving something great.
The attached study showed that students develop better learning behavior when comparing themselves with others. Here is an excerpt:
“A promising contribution of Learning Analytics is the presentation of a learner's own learning behaviour and achievements via dashboards, often in comparison to peers, with the goal of improving self-regulated learning. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the impact of these dashboards and few designs are informed by theory. Many dashboard designs struggle to translate awareness of learning processes into actual self-regulated learning. In this study we investigate a Learning Analytics dashboard based on existing evidence on social comparison to support motivation, metacognition, and academic achievement. Motivation plays a key role in whether learners will engage in self-regulated learning in the first place. Social comparison can be a significant driver in increasing motivation. We performed two randomized controlled interventions in different higher-education courses, one of which took place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were shown their current and predicted performance in a course alongside that of peers with similar goal grades. The sample of peers was selected in a way to elicit slight upward comparison. We found that the dashboard successfully promotes extrinsic motivation and leads to higher academic achievement, indicating an effect of dashboard exposure on learning behaviour, despite an absence of effects on metacognition. These results provide evidence that carefully designed social comparison, rooted in theory and empirical evidence, can be used to boost motivation and performance. Our dashboard is a successful example of how social comparison can be implemented in Learning Analytics Dashboards.”
In short, the study demonstrates that carefully designed social comparison—showing users how they perform relative to similar peers—can boost motivation and improve behavior. This aligns perfectly with Upmark’s approach: by letting users see how they measure up in real-life achievements, we encourage positive competition, self-improvement, and a fun, motivating path toward personal goals.
Our Impact
With Upmark, we’re creating a community where getting outside, tackling challenges, and hitting your goals becomes a shared experience. Achievements arent just personal milestones theyre moments to celebrate, share, and get rewarded for. By highlighting progress and inspiring each other, we turn everyday actions into motivation, fun, and real growth.