LePal Spirit
Cultivating healthy mental lifestyles through gamification and AI-driven chats
Role
Design Lead
UX Designer
Team
1 Design Lead
4 Designers
Timeline
Aug 2024 - Nov 2024
SKill
Figma, User Research, Prototyping, UI design
Summary
Helping over 1000 Gen-Z users, LePal is an AI-powered gamified mental health app developed for teenagers to improve their mental health through spirit companionship and therapy sessions. I worked on retention features to transform the LePal spirit, making the interaction experience more life-like and actively engaging users when chatting.
The Problems
Users are leaving LePal?
One click of a button and one text message might sound easy, but it’s hard for teenagers to unlock a new habit when they have to balance school and life. While conducting user research, I noticed that 1/4 of users found it hard to keep engaging with the LePal app. There were two problems:
1
Talking to the spirit still felt like talking to an AI, not a friend.
2
Users don’t feel motivated to use the app every day.
Part one
Friend ≠ Robot
A core attraction of using LePal is that every individual can cultivate their own companion spirit, where they can chat with the spirit about their life and maintain a consistent habit of checking up on their mental health. However, after conducting 10+ user interviews, users were saying that their AI spirit was a little too robot-like...
The Solution
Accessible Across Ages
To start off, I suggested some simple solutions like integrating generation-z texting slangs to the spirit and reducing the level of repetitiveness. However, even though our target audience was teenagers, the company’s goal was to eventually expand mental health access to anyone of any age. This was why I created personalized chat stickers.
Why Stickers?
Stickers, just like emojis, are ways for people to express their feelings in a subtle yet casual way. No matter what generation, they often use visual expressions (emojis, memes, gifs) when texting.
Exploring Art
Finding Inspiration
Before diving into designing, I wanted to research what existing sticker packs looked like and common factors across popular stickers. Across my favorite stickers, I found that all characters shared emotions like love, sadness, laughter, and some more.
Final Design
Bonding through Spirit Stickers
Using the Figma pencil, I sketched out six different expressions to free the spirit from its blank stare. From there, I created some examples to show how it can be used while texting!
Part Two: Keeping Users
As observed from user research, teenagers were leaving LePal after some time since they didn’t feel motivated to use the app everyday. Mental health isn’t measurable within a short term, but it shows effects after long-term use which makes using the app important.
Affinity Mapping
What do users have to say?
Some users liked the streak idea to keep them going, but other users thought keeping a streak would be stressful on top of dealing with mental health. How can I create a streak that is not stressful but still motivates users of LePal?
The Solution
Starring into Streaks
The best way to create a daily habit for user retention is by maintaining a streak. Our team decided to create two different versions of the streak feature: a mission streak and a mood streak.
Mission Streak
After completing any mission (such as crystall ball, planet therapy, or journal logs), users can continue their daily streak and receive rewards upon completion.
Mood Streak [Mid-Fis]
Every time an user enters the app, they can complete a daily check-in to log their mood and slowly see their mood stabilize over a period of time.
Final DEsign
A Shooting Comet!
Rather than the mission streak, the mood streak was a better way for users to track their emotions day after day and not time-consuming enough for them to feel frustrated with using the app. We decided to go ahead with the comet ☄️
Conclusion
Outcome
1. Reached over 1000+ users and officially launched the LePal app
2. Received over 300+ downloads and an overall 4.4/5.0 star rating in the first month
3. Check out LePal.ai on app store or google play here!
Takeaways
1. Design visuals with intention.
2. Focus on the user and the company’s objectives when brainstorming.
3. When leading a design team, communication is key! 
Odyssey Fund
Amplio Network