How we built Alan Walk in less than 6 months (part II)

When you realize that the idea could be something great, how do you actually get started with the project? You start with a standalone lean team that is going to explore a concept design and create something that excites everyone in the company.

Starting a new product from scratch and forging a path to success requires the right setup. We assembled a lean team with three key principles:

Starting with a "concept" is crucial, especially at the beginning of a project that you are building from scratch. A design concept should always feel exciting and be the source of even more ideas and feedback.

Our journey began with creating a Minimum Viable Product that would validate the concept, and test the foundations of gamification.

This initial MVP focused on three elements:

And here’s the first real-life working prototype of Alan Walk!

It was time to bring personality to Alan Walk.

The marmot has been Alan's beloved mascot since our beginning, embodying our core values of warmth, care, and playful spirit. Hence, when designing Alan Walk, we knew immediately that our fuzzy friend needed to be at the center of the experience.

We took this opportunity to evolve our mascot in exciting new ways. Leveraging our expertise in generative AI, we developed a system to create unique fun avatars that our members would be able to buy later in the game.

Every game needs its currency, and for Alan Walk, we created Alanberries. The marmot's favorite treat. You earn them by doing your everyday steps, or taking challenges, and can then exchange them for discounts within the Alan Shop, donate to selected charities, or purchase special avatars to make you shine on the leaderboard.

With our core mechanics in place, it was time to put Alan Walk to the test. We moved from an MVP concept to a V0 product, and place it in the hands of our first users — our team.

We focused on two key elements in this initial version.

First, the onboarding needed to be simple yet effective. We stripped it down to its essentials: a clear value proposition followed by Health Center access – a mandatory step for using Walk.

For the core experience, we designed new views and iterated quite a lot before settling on a passive experience: when opening the app, members would collect the berries they earned while walking.

This version wasn't perfect, but the concept had taken shape and gave us something tangible to test and refine through research interviews.

Our journey to build Alan Walk wasn't just about development. We also needed to validate members’ interests by gathering direct feedback.

We adopted a two-pronged approach to do this.

We began with internal research interviews, using “Alaners” as our first test subjects.

Some early feedback highlighted that the UI was engaging, clear, and warm, though we needed to fine-tune certain elements like copy choices and the onboarding flow.

Following internal testing, we quickly moved to validate with actual members. This was essential to ensure we weren't operating in an echo chamber and biased.

We conducted in-depth interviews with a diverse group of potential users. We shared our prototypes and observed their reactions to core features—from step tracking and our Alanberries rewards system to social challenges and the overall user experience.

Our member interviews revealed exciting insights. The concept of a walking rewards program resonated naturally with participants' expectations of a health insurance company.

But more than just tracking steps, they saw Walk as a potential bridge — connecting colleagues through shared health challenges while creating more meaningful engagement with Alan's broader health services, suggesting that Walk could become a welcoming gateway to explore the full range of Alan's offerings.

After gathering insights on Figma mockups, and validating some of our core assumptions while identifying areas for improvement, it was time to launch Alan Walk “for real”.

On April 29th, 2024, we launched Alan Walk internally as our first real-world test. This launch included core features like step tracking, avatars, berries rewards, and a leaderboard system. We set clear success metrics: 10% daily active users and 40% activation rate.

The initial feedback was incredibly encouraging and we reached the goals. The competitive element proved especially motivating — seeing colleagues' progress and live step updates encouraged more movement throughout the day.

With that, we felt ready to launch our first customer company.

We crafted two distinct launch approaches.

At the end of May 2024, we targeted tech companies with 20-100 employees, where the challenge of sedentary work is most pronounced.

We adopted a thoughtful approach with what we call “assisted” releases where through personal outreach to company admins, we achieved remarkable results: an average 45% enrollment rate, reaching up to 70% in some cases.

Within just eight days of launch, we saw a 64% enrollment rate, with 35-40% of enrolled members engaging daily. Members averaged 800 additional steps per day in their first two weeks, collectively accumulating over 4 million steps, enough to cover 3,000 kilometers!

Beyond the metrics, Walk became a catalyst for workplace connections. Sixty percent of enrolled members reported stronger bonds with colleagues through new conversations and shared walks. Early adopters embraced the game's spirit enthusiastically, with members sharing how Walk motivated them to make small but meaningful changes in their daily routines—like hopping off the metro one stop early to earn their daily berries.

The way members discovered Walk proved equally insightful: 90% learned about it through their HR departments, with the remaining 10% split between colleague referrals and direct Alan communications. A pattern that validated our dual-channel strategy while highlighting the essential role of company champions in driving adoption.

To scale the product further, we introduced "ghost releases" — launching without engaging personally with admins. We developed email and notification campaigns and kept releasing new accounts, learning, and iterating every week.

When we started with this method, 15% of users were enrolling. Now we're reaching a 30% enrollment rate in just a week, and seeing that employees continue joining even two months after release.

This two-pronged approach taught us valuable lessons about scaling Alan Walk, setting the stage for our next phase of growth.

With our foundation built and initial results validating our approach, Part III will reveal how we scaled Alan Walk to hundreds of companies, expanded our feature set, and what we learned along the way as we are transforming gamification into a core part of the Alan experience.

Interested in building the future of health with us? We're hiring for product, design, and brand roles.