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Zoe: Ziggie
In early 2025, we were tasked with creating a Tamagotchi-like companion to live within the ZOE nutrition app. Never ones to say no to some fun character design, we leapt at the opportunity to envision a cute, dynamic character that reflects the user’s microbiome, and so Ziggie came into being!
Creative Direction
David Prosser
Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits
Daniel ChesterProducer
Ifor Ashton
Design
David Prosser
Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits
Chu-Chieh Lee
Daniel ChesterAnimation & Rigging
Millie Woodcock
Ryan Brotherston
Dev JooshiZOE Design Team
Kostantinos Frantzis
Joshua Noon
Scott WalkerZoe Engineering Team
Alina Antochi
Sam Berkay
Chris McKirgan
Vishant SinghProduction Year
2025
Objective
Ziggie needed to be an interactive companion that builds a genuine emotional connection with users. Our task was to create an iconic character, compelling enough to do this across a range of moods and animated states. It needed to feel cute, cuddly, and like something users would want to care for and engage with, while also reflecting their gut health journey back to them. The better food a user logs in the app, the more positive feedback Ziggie provides.
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It was also important to the ZOE team that the character act as a credible, science-backed guide, without feeling overly academic or preachy, a tricky balance to strike!
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Form
Ziggie needed to be an anthropomorphic companion, using expression to convey curiosity, joy, and encouragement. From the outset, it was important that the visual direction leaned into rounded, microbiome-inspired forms that felt premium, without tipping too far into something gross, childlike, or overly cartoonish.
We explored design elements like a large head, chubby cheeks, and generally soft features to help elevate the sense of cuteness.
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Initially we also explored the idea of Ziggie being almost semi-permeable, so that it could ingest foods or shapes referencing different micro-biome cultures and we would be able to see them reflected inside Ziggie's body.
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Evolution
Part of the initial brief was to present a character that would grow, or “evolve” similar to that of Pokémon. They were looking specifically for the character to evolve alongside healthy eating choices. A sort of symbiosis where our character inspires care and interaction, and you change your food choices to encourage this.
Eventually, it became apparent that the character evolution was adding a level of complexity not essential at this early stage and was parked.
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World
The ZOE team decided that we could still show the evolution and progress of the character through its surrounding world. The setting of a garden seemed like a good analogy of Ziggie’s microbiome world. Something that needs cultivating and a delicate balance of different plant species on which to thrive. We didn’t want the garden to feel too grounded, like a literal space, we wanted to tip the needle a little more towards the abstract, where shapes are more suggestive of the environment.
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States
Ziggie had to live in-app and be interactive with each individual user's experience so we had to switch up the way we worked from a typical linear narrative. The ZOE team suggested we use the interactive software Rive to build a modular system for Ziggie's “emotion states”. Building them in Rive meant that Ziggie was now fully interactive and we can trigger each one of the bespoke 13 animated states from a neutral, ambient state. Pretty nerdy and satisfying. We loved it!