Kenkō are tiny creatures that live inside your phone using the latest electrogenic technology from Kenkō Labs. Discover the Kenkō or Kenkōs in your phone, learn more about these mysterious beings and what makes them tick.
We believed there was a gap in the market for an app focused on the youth market (~8 to late teens) to make being healthy a side-effect of nurturing a virtual creature.
The creatures needed to be cute (kawaii) to start out and develop through multiple growth phases into something engaging. For inspiration I looked at Tamagotchi, Giga Pet, Pokémon, and Digimon.
Inspiration
As our audience would be younger and we wanted the exercise to be a coincidence of playing a game, I wanted something playful. I’d always liked the whimsical style of Two Dots so used that as inspiration. I ended up connecting with, and chatting to Owen Davey, the illustrator.
A whiteboard workflow from a very productive session with Product and Engineering.
A concept flow for the splash screen simulating the discovery of a Kenkō inside your phone. As the progress bar loads, the Kenkō comes into view then scales up.
A progression concept we created was the lens increasing in ‘sides’ as the player levels up. From triangle, to square, to pentagon, to hexagon, etc.
The main screen went through many iterations. I’ve selected a couple from the progression to highlight design deltas.
In the Early version the lens is not well developed, the koins and streak icons are weak and we only have one progress bar.
By the Mid version the lens has a frame, screw heads and a glass effect. Koin and streak icons are now colourful and we now have both activity, and journey progress bars.
The Final version moved messaging to the top, reduced lens size, added a metallic background, and grouped the progress bars (now with colourful icons) into a unified module, a metal plate.
The activity from exercise is translated into steps that are applied to your current journey and therefore progress.
Each location is intended to be fun, recognizable and a little educational.
City Landmarks was an idea we were exploring as side quests to the main locations.
We also wanted to explore exclusive missions that were epic journeys best tackled by teams of players like school classes, church groups, etc.
Lastly, paid locations purchased via an in-app purchase or koins purchased from the store, or earned via completing adventures, habituation or rewarded actions.
Clicking on an Adventure shows some educational/informational text as well as the quest details.
The Store allows players to purchase koins to add to any earned koins they may have accumulated. Players can buy lens colour tints or gradients or decorations to personalize their experience.
Inviting friends, classmates, or colleagues was an important part of sharing and accountability. We devised a system of connection via sharing unique codes; if both match, a connection is made.
Current Status
Our engineering resources experienced insurmountable technical issues with the iPhone accelerometer used to provide movement data to the app. After many attempts and some challenging discussions, the project was abandoned.
