In the AI era, *Travel Frog*, this product is presenting a brand new answer.
Text by Xiao Kui
Edited by Guopu
Do you remember the viral game *Travel Frog* 10 years ago? It once recorded 20 million downloads in a single month, with a peak daily active user count of 7.63 million. Ten years later, this frog has an AI version — but this time, what accompanies you is not a frog, but a group of animal friends.
"You've walked so many steps today, did you go to conquer the world?"
This is the first sentence Eddie the meerkat in the "PawStep" app said to me today. When I only walked 300 steps yesterday, his exact words were: "I walked more than you just looking for the remote control in my room."
Main Interface
I can hardly explain to others why an AI's teasing remarks could actually make me put on my shoes and go out. But the fact is, I did end up walking two more kilometers. It was for no other reason than that I just didn't want to be looked down upon by it. The most interesting part of "PawStep" is that it never makes me feel like I'm completing a task, but rather gives me a reason that I want to go out.
01 It never urges you, but you want to open it every day
When I first heard about the design concept of "PawStep", I was skeptical. For a step-counting product, isn't its core function to urge people to walk? No push notifications, no reminders, no set targets, no leaderboards — then what makes people want to move?
But after using it for a while, I found that I would actively open it every day. Not because I received any push notification, but because I wanted to know which city the sharp-tongued meerkat had visited today, what stories he brought back, and whether he met any interesting people on the way.
This difference is actually quite subtle. Push notifications can get your attention, but anticipation helps you form a habit.
Most step-counting or sports products on the market are accustomed to adopting the same safe logic: set targets, send reminders, display leaderboards, push reminders when the number of steps is not enough, and issue medals when the steps reach the standard. This mechanism does work for many people, but there are also many people like me who get tired of it after a few days of novelty, turn off the notification permission, and then never open it again.
Of course, this does not mean that such products are not good. As mainstream products, they do help many people who need external constraints. But "PawStep" has chosen a different path. It assumes that you already know you need to exercise, and you don't need it to remind you. All the things it does happen the moment you open the APP: your travel companion will check your step count of the day, and then decide what tone to use to greet you. If you walk too little, it will tease you; if you walk a lot, it will praise you. In any case, it will not preset a condition of "how many steps you should take".
This "no preset" design, on the contrary, frees me from a certain psychological burden. Exercising without KPI is the thing that truly integrates into my daily life for me.
Ding Chuan, the developer, once talked to me about the original intention of making this product. He is the kind of person who can sit in front of a computer for more than ten hours at a time. Later, a doctor told him that he had mild varicose veins in his calves and needed to walk more. He is not lazy, and he knows he must follow the doctor's advice, but he also knows that if he walks only for health reasons, he will most likely not stick to it. He developed "PawStep" initially to give himself a reason to "want to walk", rather than a cold system reminder.
That's how "PawStep" looks like now — there lives a group of animals: meerkats, raccoons, hippos, alpacas... Each has its own personality, and the personality differences are so big that you will doubt whether they live in the same APP.
Little animals in "PawStep"
Eddie the meerkat is a typical example of being tough-mouthed but soft-hearted. If you walk too little, he will tease you mercilessly, but if you walk more than 10,000 steps, he will immediately change his tone: "Good heavens! You've walked so many steps today, did you go to conquer the world?" He never spares you on words, but you can feel that he actually cares about how much you walk. Kuban the raccoon is a totally different style. Sharp-tongued, grumpy, impatient, but surprisingly reliable at critical moments. Once I didn't walk much for several consecutive days, Kuban directly said: "Did you leave your legs at home?" But then he added: "Alright, go out for a walk tomorrow, don't make me say it a second time." This kind of "gruff care" is more useful to me than gentle encouragement.
There is also a guy who is so stingy to the bone that he is even calculating when posting on social platforms; the gentle one who loves gossip can always dig out all kinds of trivial stories from the streets; the one who shouts to work out all day long is not actually diligent at all...
Each animal has a vivid personality, not a flat character with a random label. You can never guess what you will hear when you open the APP today. Whether it is disdain or enthusiasm, it is all hidden in your step count of the day.
This "no urging but teasing" design is extremely rare in AI companion products. Most products follow the safe path: gentle encouragement, for fear that users will leave if they speak a little harshly. But PawStep bets on another thing: what makes users willing to open the APP every day is sometimes not tenderness, but authenticity. If you really didn't exercise today, it shouldn't be pretended that nothing happened; on the contrary, when you really work hard, you shouldn't only get a perfunctory "check-in successful". An imperfect friend is often more memorable than a perfect assistant. In other words, the most effective motivation for adults to exercise is sometimes not self-discipline, but "not wanting to be looked down upon by that AI".
An imperfect friend is indeed more memorable than a perfect assistant. Because its reaction is real, and only real things have weight.
Developer Ding Chuan also added some careful designs to this "teasing friend relationship". For a period of time, I walked very little for several consecutive days, and Eddie suddenly sent me a message saying that he had grabbed a coffee coupon, on the condition that I had to walk 5000 steps first. That coupon was snatched by him from an event. I never thought that this guy who is usually extremely stingy would be willing to share the benefit he got. At that moment, I had to admit that I was completely moved. He didn't say "come on you can do it", he just gave me a reason to go out in his own way, and that reason works better than any encouragement.
02 Walking becomes a trip, steps become stories
However, if "PawStep" is just a step counter that teases people, I might have deleted it after the novelty wore off. What really makes me keep it all the time is another thing: it turns walking into a trip.
Steps are no longer cold numbers, but the distance to a certain city. The more you walk, the farther your travel companion will go; the less you walk, the more it will wander around nearby. Every step you take becomes the beginning of a certain story told by your travel companion.
Developer Ding Chuan said one of his inspirations is the Japanese drama *Midnight Diner*. In that drama, there is an ordinary person behind each dish, with warmth and regret. The city stories in "PawStep" are roughly in the same style.
In Singapore, you will meet a girl who punches sandbags late at night; in Chengdu, you get to know Jun Ge who is henpecked; in Seoul, you may meet Yuzhe who keeps taking the civil service exam even after failing many times. After reading these stories, you will even think that you must go there for a visit when you have a chance. The most touching part of traveling is that you meet the daily lives of some ordinary people in a strange city, and then find that they are just like you, rushing for life, worrying about trivial things, and feeling happy for small little things. Your favor for a city often comes from these unexpected understanding.
Warm stories
Every time the travel companion arrives in a new city, it will also tell you some random trivia. Once in Singapore, it suddenly tested me: "Buddy, Bak Kut Teh has the word 'tea' in its name, but what is served is a bowl of dark bone soup. Do you know how this name came about? A. Eaten with kung fu tea B. Derived from a homophone of a person's name C. Named by the emperor." I randomly chose B, and it immediately replied: "You are the top student in cultural class! There was a peddler named Li Wendi in Quanzhou, Fujian, who started his business selling meat bones and scallion rice. Diners called him 'Meat Bone Di'. In Fujian dialect, the pronunciation of 'Di' is close to 'Tea', so over time, it became 'Bak Kut Teh'." After that, it added a line: "You got it right, which shows that you are a genius in linguistics — even though you may only be good at telling that the hot pot restaurant waiter is from Sichuan."
I laughed out loud in front of the screen. That bowl of Bak Kut Teh without a single tea leaf, together with the whole history of Chinese people going to Southeast Asia behind it, was remembered by me in this way. These contents are neither travel guides nor encyclopedias, but more like a casual sentence from a local friend when walking: "That's how it is here." It seems useless after hearing it, but it is impossible to forget. Later when I walked on the road, what was in my mind was no longer "how many steps I still need to finish today", but those random trivia and stories. Unconsciously, I walked a much longer distance.
The travel companions also post on social platforms, each with their own personality. Eddie bought two "buy one get one free" products in the supermarket. When he got home, he found that the first one was about to expire, and the second one was too. He wrote in his post: "It's equal to I paid for two things that are about to expire." The next day when he arrived in Singapore, he took a photo of the Supertree, with the caption: "Huge artificial trees covered with plants. It's very shady during the day, and the lights at night look like *Avatar*. I looked up at the skyway on the tree, there are people walking on it, it should be charged." The stingy one is always calculating accounts, the literary one is sighing about life, and the sharp-tongued one will even comment on a cat passing by. Then I found that I was actually waiting for a post sent by AI.
Social platform sharing
Developer Ding Chuan told me about some future plans. Some are already on the way, some are still in the imagination stage, but they all sound a bit exciting.
One plan is to let two people walk together, each with their own travel companion, and choose to set off from the same city. For the same thing, Eddie and Kuban will have completely different reactions. One may be moved, while the other may tease, and at the same time the plot will fork. Although you are walking on your own road, the different reactions of the travel companions also make this common journey interesting and unpredictable.
Another idea he calls "Small Town". He wants these small animals to have a place to live for real. He wants this small town to be filled little by little, and each animal has its own neighbors, daily life, temper and story. Dora the little hippo will teach you simple relaxation exercises in the office, Kaka the alpaca can help you make travel plans. They not only accompany you to walk, but also can be useful in other parts of your life. You can see them cooking, quarreling, and visiting each other at home, just like any of your real social circle.
Small Town
03 Integration with AI glasses and hardware
It does not only stay in the mobile phone. Now "PawStep" has been connected with hardware such as AI glasses, which surprised me a lot when I first knew it. Now you wear a pair of lightweight glasses walking on the street, passing an old building, and a soft voice will come to your ear: "This building used to be a bookstore"; when you walk into a new store, it will add: "This cup of coffee seems to be ten yuan more expensive than the one next door"; when you pass the barbecue stall at night, it will hesitate to say "You have walked 10,000 steps today... are you sure you want to sit down?" It never makes decisions for you, it's just the feeling that there is someone murmuring beside you all the time, like an invisible friend in your life, who is not noisy, but you know it's there. In this regard, PawStep is really different from most AI companion products on the market — when others are still stuck in the chat interface, it has already stepped into the real world in front of you.
More advanced gameplay has also been implemented. When you take a photo with AI glasses, for example, you meet someone in a coffee shop, the travel companions will gather around to discuss, some gossip "When did you fall in love behind our backs", some praise "This girl is so sweet". If you take a photo of coffee, they will tease "Humans are paying for another stupid tax". Your life becomes their topic, and you can't help but want to talk back. The relationship between humans and AI has gradually changed from "you use me, I serve you" to a more equal, even a little noisy daily relationship. Hardware like Looki has also started to access similar experiences, and "PawStep" has gone further in this direction. This gameplay sounds far away, but it is indeed happening now.
Smart hardware integration