UNIVA Health — Biomes for a digital recovery garden
Design of 16 narrative biomes, their plants and special items for the garden of a digital therapy app that supports recovery from eating disorders.
Client
UNIVA Health, a digital therapy app supporting recovery from eating disorders (ED).
The challenge
The app organizes its recovery program into 16 weeks, with several chapters within each week. To represent that journey inside the game, UNIVA needed a garden the user would watch grow throughout the program: a system of scenes with an ecological, organic aesthetic, with a palette and visual components designed to support recovery — without falling into clinical imagery or direct references to the illness.
Assets
- 16 biomes/scenes, one for each week of the program
- 4 plant species per biome (64 plants in total)
- 5 growth stages per plant, designed for micro-animations within the garden
- 2 special items per biome, thematically tied to that week
- A short story for each biome, connecting the scene to that week’s therapeutic theme
The system is already integrated and in production inside the app: in the drought biome, for example, the user plants and watches daisies, cornflowers, sunflowers and poppies grow over the cracked earth, week by week.
Hypothesis and process
Each week of the program addresses a different recovery theme, and each biome translates that theme into a recognizable ecosystem rather than an abstract icon: the week devoted to persevering in any environment, for example, became a desert biome, with plants able to grow in harsh conditions. The metaphor lives in the choice of scene and species, not in a separate explanatory text.
The 5 growth stages of each plant let the garden change in appearance as the user progresses: not a fixed reward unlocked all at once, but a visual reflection of real progress, chapter by chapter. Each biome’s special items reinforce that same weekly narrative from another angle, as scene details rather than plants.
Final solution
A system of 16 narrative biomes, with 64 animatable plants across 5 growth stages and 32 special items, designed to translate a 16-week therapy program into a garden that grows alongside the user inside the app.