New characters were recently added to the SPÖRTS application, and they have already won over Lü users of all ages.
We sat down with Steve Bergeron, Lü’s artistic director for the past year and a half, to discuss his work and the creative process behind the design of these endearing characters.
Where did the idea of integrating characters into Lü applications come from?
Since Lü offers a unique product, with nothing comparable on the market, our team needs to constantly explore new avenues. We’re always reflecting on which graphic styles and types of games work best, and how far they should go to meet educational and pedagogical objectives.
After giving it a lot of thought, it became clear to me that we needed to add characters to our applications. That way, kids would be able to relate to them, and our educational games would reach a whole new level of interaction.
What role did you play in creating the characters?
I really spearheaded the characters’ creation from start to finish. I was in charge of the research and design processes (ideation, creation, drawing, etc.). Of course, the characters couldn’t have come to life without the software and application development team; I work with them on a daily basis. It was an exciting project for me and I loved working on it.
What did the creation process look like?
The first step in the creation process was identifying our preliminary objectives: to generate identification, attachment, and commitment. It was clear to us that adding characters would allow us to achieve these goals. After that, I wanted to know what types of characters children would enjoy the most. We surveyed nearly 100 children, which led to several findings, some of them surprising. For example, we found that children generally don’t like characters that look too perfect. The survey also revealed that children prefer to see a variety of characters, rather than ones that are all similar. These observations greatly influenced my artistic approach. We also needed to appeal to both older and younger children, so it was imperative to have characters with well-defined personalities.
Finally, we needed to find a versatile formula, one that would let us use the characters alone, but also as opponents or teammates. It took several months of work to create the characters that users can currently see in SPÖRTS.
Will we get to see these characters in other Lü applications?
Clearly, creating these new characters has opened up a range of possibilities, so users may well see them more and more in other Lü applications in the next few months.
