Case 1
Kakao Project 100: Personal Improvement App
Question
How can Kakao incentivize people to maintain personal improvement goals (create habits) for 100 days within a community?
Overview
Kakao’s social impact team is launching a “Project 100” app, where users set a goal or habit they want to maintain for 100 days. Kakao was interested in working with Minerva students to brainstorm ways to increase the project accomplishment rate. We focused on stimulating social and individual motivation within the mobile application.
My role: I did research on gamification and social motivation along with group member Haruna Katayama. As the design lead, I led ideation and rapid prototyping sessions with Haruna Katayama, Dennis Antela, and Jackline Kasisi before creating the synthesized interactive prototype.
Discovery: Research and information synthesis
A primary objective is to have people work to achieve their self-improvement goals within a team. There are thus two paths of incentivization: individual-targeted, and team-targeted. Elements of gamification can be applied to both, while peer bonus incentives can be applied to the latter.
Individual rewards appeal to competence satisfaction; group incentives (rewards appeal to social relatedness through team interactions and a collective goal.
Gamification refers to the use of design elements typically associated with games in non-game contexts. Points, performance graphs, badges, leaderboards map to a user’s need for competence. Freedom to set goals. customize the path to self-improvement, and easily navigate the app corresponds to a user’s need for autonomy. How connected users feel to teammates and emphasis on the importance of a user’s actions for a group’s overall performance maps to a user’s need for social relatedness and relevance.
Groups serve as platform for collaboration and boosting motivation, but small groups can be much more effective than large ones. Social elements should be encouraging and not demotivating, so networking opportunities like sharing news and sending encouragement with potential for reciprocity are incorporated. Inviting friends to challenges and seeing which friends are doing what challenges are also included.
Define: Who is the user? What challenges do they face?
The common “why use” for all personas are self-improvement, accountability, and motivation in setting a goal and maintaining a habit. The emotional benefits sought are either achievement/pride, community and belonging, or both.
One possible user flow for new and existing users.
Ideate & Prototype
(Scroll down for explanations of individual screens)
Brainstorming elements to be included on each screen. The information architecture was informed by the user flows we previously created.
Rapid prototyping of screens on a whiteboard
Simple forms and rounded corners make the app seem warmer, to reducing user anxiety associate with maintaining habits. Rounded shapes create positive affect compared to sharp shapes, which should reflect in less intimidation upon opening the app. Noto Sans is the default Kakao font; color are informed by the given Kakao style guide.
(click screens to enlarge)
Extend
Collaboration with external companies can become a means for other companies to engage in corporate social responsibility in conjunction with advertising. Companies can sponsor specific challenges; for example, if Adidas wants to sponsor a running challenge, they can display ads to users in the Running Group. If members complete the challenge, Adidas will donate X dollars to charity.
Developer Luis Gonzales worked on integrating Blockchain into the prototype to facilitate connectivity with other Kakao systems (click images to enlarge).