Beni by KindWorks.AI
The AI agent for intentional Kindness at work.
KindWorks.AI (NextAI '23) is a Vancouver-based B2B AI startup that provides an enterprise platform for the intentional practice of Kindness in the workplace. Kindworks.AI’s agent, Beni, leverages insights from behavioral science research and an in-house AI model for personalized Kindness journeys.
I joined KindWorks.AI as the first UX hire in summer 2023. I reported directly to the Chief Experience Officer and spearheaded our first Gamification Design System, increasing user engagement by 30% within 3 months.
Role
UX Design Intern/ First UX Design Hire
Timeline
May - August 2023
Disciplines
Gamification design
User research
Design strategy
Product thinking
✿ What difference did I make as the first UX hire?
Daily engagement
↑ 30%
of users engage daily with Beni's prompts
Kindness exercise completion
↑ 20%
of users complete their daily Kindness exercise
✿ Why gamification at this stage?
Our team strongly believes that Kindness is a muscle that can be strengthened through regular exercise.
At this stage of our product, Beni can already:
Integrate with workplace communication tools, namely Slack, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Teams.
Send daily individual and team Kindness exercises, enhancing employee well-being.
Learn from each user's past interactions to tailor individual exercises and deliver Kindness prompts at the optimal times when the user is most likely to engage.
We realized at this point that, to enable long-term habit formation, our product needs to make daily Kindness exercises more rewarding to complete. Gamification design would be the next logical step on our UX roadmap for higher user engagement.
✿ What can we do?
How might we gamify Beni to increase user engagement?
Why lean UX?
Active users
>15% increase in daily and weekly active users
Completion rate
>15% increase in exercise completion rate
Think
Studying successful habit-forming products
We started off our Thinking stage by exploring other successful habit-forming products, namely Grammarly, Duolingo, and Instagram. We gained 3 key insights:
These products all invest in strong storytelling and well-thought-out user journeys.
Users get to collect or unlock something each time they complete a desired task.
There is an element of surprise that keeps users curious and engaged.
Mental models
After extensive secondary research on the mental models behind gamified products, we decided to apply Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis Framework for Gamification and Behavioral Design as the theoretical framework of our design strategy. We found that this is a well-regarded model that has stood behind the success of tech giants like Google, Accenture, Tesla, and many other successful habit-forming products.
We narrowed down our focus onto 6 Core Drives that we deemed most relevant to our product.
A design system
We knew very early on that we would need a Gamification Design System for coherence, consistency, and scalability.
The biggest objective of this design system is to enable a strong sense of accomplishment. It needs to make users feel like they get to embark on meaningful "quests" and level up in their own Kindness journey.
Gamification design system
A badge collection and progression system that are designed for our enterprise AI agent, Beni, to increase user engagement.
Make
Key to our gamification design is a badge collection and progression system.
Users "earn" badges as they complete challenges on their Kindness journeys.
We created 3 key gamification elements:
Streaks
Milestone markers
Kindness impact awards
Launch
As the sole UX designer on the team, I collaborated closely with our co-founders, engineers, and content designer to ship gamification within 2 months. We launched more than 70 badges in 4 different gamification categories.
Due to my non-disclosure agreement, I could only show a limited number of designs from the system.
Streaks
Streaks are badges users get to collect based on completing Kindnesses for multiple weeks in a row.
The concept is Garden of Kindness: every act of Kindness is like planting a seed. Using streaks as a consistency cultivating tool, we allow users to grow one garden of Kindness after another.
Milestone markers
Milestone markers are badges users collect based on achieving a certain number of acts of Kindness.
The concept is Kindness habitat: we want to make users feel like they are embarking on a "quest" to "unlock" essential elements for the sustainment of a natural habitat.
Kindness impact awards
Kindness impact awards are based on sporadic moments throughout the user's journey to emphasize the impact they are achieving.
Our narrative-driven design approach hopes to tap into the user's innate desire for meaning and purpose, giving them a sense of accomplishment and excitement.
✿ What difference did I make?
Daily engagement
↑ 30%
of users engage daily with Beni's prompts
Kindness exercise completion
↑ 20%
of users complete their daily Kindness exercise
We treated gamification design as a UX challenge, because it goes beyond visuals or aesthetics and focuses heavily on human motivation.
These early positive results suggest the new gamification design is effectively motivating users and driving greater user participation. Moving forward, we plan to continue monitoring these metrics closely and look for opportunities to further optimize the gamification features to sustain and build upon this initial success.
✿ What did I learn?
Shipping fast beats perfection.
As a startup, we deeply valued being able to ship fast to gain feedback from users right away. This lean UX approach allowed us to validate our problem hypothesis AND ship a solution within 3 months of product development.
Ambiguity presents opportunity.
This experience marks my first exposure to the strategy behind the gamification design of an AI chatbot, a unique habit-forming product that has limited UI real estate. The early-stage startup environment is fast-paced, action-biased, and full of ambiguity, which presents opportunity for innovation, ownership, and creative problem-solving.