Povo Walk is a step tracker for povo2.0, KDDI's mobile data management app in Japan. It pays users in tokens, a currency they spend on data and deals, for hitting walking milestones.
Povo2.0 is KDDI's online-only mobile brand, built around cutomizable phone plans. What sets it apart from the rest of Japan's telco market isn't the pricing but the token economy underneath it.
Users buy tokens alongside data, then earn and burn them across engaging lifestyle mini-apps developed by KDDI and Circles.life. These mini-apps centered on topics that people generally found fun such as games, puzzles, and horoscope readings. The tokens earned from engaging in these mini-apps can then be traded back for data outright.
This token economy only works if tokens keep moving so my innovation team was continually working on new ways to put tokens into users' hands.
POVO'S token-based LIFESTYLE MINI-APPS
Povo Walk introduces a new use case that allows users to earn tokens. 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.
As the only designer on the project working across the Singapore and Japan teams, I was in charge from first concept to developer handoff. Through my designs, I needed to attract new users and to retain users – essentially to build strong relationships with users so that they decide to integrate Povo Walk into their daily lives.
My team came up with two ways to incentivize people to stay engaged on Povo Walk:
1. Provide users a health customer value proposition (CVP) by encouraging them to take more steps so that they can boost their health and live longer
2. Introduce token-based rewards to motivate users to continually unlock walking milestones
KDDI handed me a chart of step-count milestones with the exact token payout for each milestone. My goal was to translate the chart to an engaging step tracker.
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 encourage users to make Povo Walk part of their daily routine
After discussing and whiteboarding with the product manager, I created the full user flow diagram to map out the full end-to-end experience.
The following prototype showcases a user’s entire journey from onboarding to reaching all the milestones. When a user reaches their first milestone, they unlock all subsequent milestone challenges and when they reach the second milestone, they start to earn tokens as a reward.
There are two kinds of step challenges running simultaneously:
1. Streak challenges – reaching a set number of steps per day for a number of consecutive days
2. Total step challenges – accumulating a certain number of steps overall
The two challenges are mutually inclusive, meaning that two kinds of progress are advancing at the same time. A single walk moves up both. As I designed this user flow, I also thought about ways to keep users engaged psychologically.
Our brains naturally 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, a mechanism known as the Zeigarnik effect.
In Povo Walk, we gave users a clear sense of progression and milestones left to be reached as an effort promote their desire to complete the challenges and by doing so, maintain healthy step count habits.
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I finalized my designs in English and had the KDDI web director translate them into Japanese. After translation, I handed off my designs to the development team for implementation.
Povo Walk launched in mid-May 2024 to 100,000 iOS users, with the full iOS and Android rollout happening after a series of legal checks, terms and conditions review, and approvals.
splash screen design on app store
Designing across the Japan and Singapore teams was the most rewarding part of this project, as I learned how to communicate cross-culturally while balancing the needs of two different organizations. I also learned how to present my designs to engineers in an effective form they can build from and to address edge case inquiries they had for me.
As product specifications evolved, it was important for me to communicate with my team to make sure that everyone was on the same page in order to deliver a quality product that met users' needs. Team alignment on product vision was crucial!
wonderful collaboration across the singapore and japan teams
