Mobile app that leverages a milestone and token reward system to help users achieve step count goals
KDDI, a Japanese telecommunications operator, wanted to devise new ways to increase customer satisfaction and delight within povo, their digital telco app. They wanted to introduce a new use case for handing out tokens to their users, which can be exchanged for rewards.
povo2.0 is an online brand that provides customers with increased phone plan flexibility. It continually strives to increase customer satisfaction and engagement by exploring innovative concepts beyond the telco industry.
To amplify user engagement, povo leverages a token ecosystem, where users can buy tokens along with data, earn and burn tokens to access various apps (e.g povo Games, horoscope reading, etc.) within povo app’s Explore tab, exchange tokens for data, and spend tokens to unlock deals.
Engaging lifestyle apps
Introduce apps on topics that users are interested in, including games and news
Token ecosystem
Users can earn and exchange tokens for various rewards
povo Walk introduces a new use case that allows users to earn tokens. As the sole designer on the team, I was in charge of conceptualizing and executing the entire product from start to finish.
The main objectives are to increase:
User acquisition
How might we provide value to users so that they decide to try out povo Walk?
User retention
How might we build a strong relationship with users so that they integrate it into their daily lives?
To address povo Walk's objectives, my team and I brainstormed the benefits of povo Walk and came up with the following solutions:
Provide users a health customer value proposition (CVP) by tracking users' step counts so that they can boost their health and live longer
Incorporate milestone challenges as a gamification technique to drive user engagement and to bring users delight
Introduce token-based rewards to motivate users to continually unlock walking milestones
For design inspiration, I took a look at the existing step trackers popular in Japan to see what core features competitors offered and how I could differentiate povo Walk to help it stand out in unique ways in the Japanese market.
Rather than simply tracking step counts and giving users insights on their fitness journeys like what most step count apps do, povo Walk's unique selling proposition is its badge and reward structure, which encourages users to walk more in order to unlock rewards.
On a high level, the povo Walk experience occurs in three phases – onboarding, activation, and habit forming.
Onboarding
Incentivize users to start their povo Walk journey
Activation
Help users get to their 1st “Aha!” moment, which turns them into happy, returning customers
Habit forming
Health and token incentives help users make povo Walk part of their daily routine
I outlined the user flow after discussing and whiteboarding with the product manager to ensure team alignment on the product vision.
KDDI came up with a chart of the step count milestones and their corresponding token reward amounts. Our Phase 1 goal was to convey the established milestones to an easily digestible dashboard.
To reduce cognitive overload, it was agreed upon within the team to have two separate dashboards – an landing page dashboard for users’ 1st milestone challenge and a subsequent milestones dashboard.
KDDI's established milestones indicated two types of challenges, streak-based challenges and total step-count challenges, which are mutually inclusive. For clarity, it made sense to place the two milestone categories into two separate sections within the dashboard.
Onboarding: welcome
Landing page dashboard: 1st challenge
Subsequent challenges dashboard
People generally dislike the tension created by leaving tasks incomplete. Naturally, our brains become fixated on the psychological tension caused by open loops and seek closure. As a result, we remember incomplete tasks better and take steps to complete them. In povo Walk, we give users a clear sense of progression, milestones left to be reached, and step count streak to be maintained, which promotes the desire to keep up with step count habits.
Landing page dashboard: 1st challenge
1st challenge reached
Subsequent challenges dashboard
Landing page dashboard: 1st challenge
1st challenge reached
Subsequent challenges dashboard
povo Walk's initial draft had a lot of white space and felt like presenting a list of obligations to users. In an effort to bring more excitement and delight to users, I designed and drew a vibrant landscape to complement users’ walking journeys, also making sure to incorporate Japanese cultural elements such as a temple, cherry blossom trees, and Koinobori to cater to Japanese povo users.
Take a look at my final prototype for povo Walk's phase 1! The following prototype showcases a user’s entire journey from onboarding to reaching all the milestones. The key “Aha!” moments occur when 1) a user reaches the first milestone, thereby unlocking all subsequent milestone challenges and 2) a user reaches the second milestone, earning tokens as a reward.
After finalizing the prototype in English, I handed my designs over to the web director for Japanese translation and the development team for implementation. After a series of legal checks, terms and conditions review, and approvals, povo Walk launched for 100,000 iOS and Android users in May.
We launched povo Walk to 100,000 iOS users in mid-May and will proceed with launching for 100% of all povo users across iOS and Android devices once the privacy policy gets finalized. By end of May, we've observed a good amount of initial user interest.
The following success criteria was set during the product planning stage. It measures user acquisition rate, or users' interest in using povo Walk.
The first onboarding screen was used as the app preview screen on Google Play, which summarizes povo Walk’s overall mission and gives users a sense of the journey they will experience when using the app.
Designing in a collaborative environment across Japan and Singapore teams taught me a lot of things and proved to be an exceptionally rewarding experience. I learned how to effectively present and hand off my designs to engineers for implementation and how to address the various edge cases within an app. The other key takeaway I discovered was:
I engaged in multiple whiteboarding sessions, discussions, and prototype demos with the product manager and engineers before reaching a consensus on the values and benefits that povo Walk would provide, especially with legal considerations. As the product specifications evolved, it was important to communicate and make sure that everyone was on the same page in order to deliver a quality product that met users' needs.
