Case Study: YUJINKO
Rainbows. Who doesn’t love ‘em?
Background
Yujinko began as a small prototyping job, which evolved to become a startup in its own right. The team that coalesced around the platform consisted of world class talent - alumni from Disney, Mattel, Amiga, Jim Henson, Konami, USC film school, Grammy award winners… a wildly creative group whose DNA persists in Island in Space today.
The Penny Prototype
The initial prototyping spec was for a “never ending storytelling doll,” a companion who would share sweet bedtime stories, a new one every week, perhaps? We quickly realized that a few simple sensors could transform a glorified mp3 player into something with real situational awareness.
At the time, tablets were becoming ubiquitous and anxiety about screen time was (and still is) a common parental pain point. We theorized that a “story doll” could bridge the gap between digital and physical play. A companion app could update the toy, but needn’t be present for the toy to work.
BTLE would also allow us to connect the toy to a mobile app peripherally as both controller and output. This opened the possibility for completely new play patterns, for which some market precedent existed.
Initially assuming our audience would be children ages 3 - 6, we leaned into the fantasy narrative vibes and built a character with nostalgic charm. We modeled a variety of I/O triggers inside a simple app, and set out to meet our users.
No deck survives first contact with reality.
R&D
After many rounds of play testing, we learned a lot. Takeaways included:
Gender neutral characters had more universal appeal (in the above slide, we have replaced the cuddly cat with an androgynous fox)
Open ended play was more compelling than structured narrative (Minecraft was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 Billion that year so, not a surprise)
Simple light and sound effects could create powerful illusions of life (but only if the timing was perfect)
We were also joined by team members who had serious chops in the toy and animation industries. Their insights brought us to the next iteration.
“Muppets as a Service”
After a solid year of development, the product looked very different. Instead of an enchanted fairy tale creature, Yujinko had become a little lost alien who needed a place to crash. His package remained simple: one button. No moving parts, but LED animation gave him a big personality. Under the hood were accelerometers, sopisticated-at-the-time voice recognition and an NFC reader (because collectable accessory upsells seemed like a plausible CLV boost).
The app looked different too. The strategy was still to push new content through the app, but instead of telling stories he now told off-the-cuff jokes. We added an expanded (and updatable) roster of LED animated behaviors and cute chirps. Yujinko’s “home world” was now envisioned as an Island in Space (get it?). Initially featureless, it could grow and change as the user accumulated hours of engagement with the toy. New buffs could represent new DLC.
We also invested in quality sound design to compliment the quirky sci-fi character’s miniature world. The speakers were right-sized for a warm and intimate soundscape in your lap, just right for ambient noise or alien folk music:
We were happy with the fundamentals, and felt the feature set was loose enough to expand on what worked and drop whatever did not. Feedback was enthusiastic; the new concept engaged a much broader age range, and might even be something adults would buy for themselves. We began to conceive of Yujinko less as a single product, and more as a platform: a persistent world of vibes, IP, and casual gaming; anchored by a delightful companion who, as initially imagined, would never run out of things to say.
By 2016, we had a BOM, a manufacturing partner, and a KickStarter campaign ready to launch. We also had a serious problem.
Plush is a terrible medium
Because we had spent so much time playtesting, our prototypes were grizzled veterans. Accumulated damage affected performance. They were impossible to clean. Pattern updates were made to to reinforce critical areas, and it kind of worked. But it was clear the design heritage from our day-one cuddly concept was actually a risk to the experience we wanted to provide. Even if we could afford to manufacture higher quality plush in the USA (which we could not), it still would have been a bad idea.
In 2017, we made the difficult decision not to proceed to the pilot phase as a plush toy.
Retrospective
Though much of the Yujinko stack is deprecated, many of the concepts retain promise. A 2020s version would look very different, and might be worth exploring someday.
