An interview with Yolanda Xing
by Steven Harmon
Recently a colleague shared with me a poop tracking game called Scarab and while there aren't any toilets depicted within the interface of the app, I felt compelled to interview the creator of it since it was designed to be played while on the toilet. What ensued was a lovely conversation about data and dung, of poo and personal time, of crap and connection.
Follow Yolanda here: @yolandaxxing
Steven: All right. Thank you so much, Yolanda Xing, for coming. It's great to have you. Toilet Game Studies covers games that feature toilets, but it's also interested in games that are designed to be played whilst on the toilet.
And that's why I thought Scarib was a great, choice to interview, and I'm glad you're on the interview. So I guess first off, the big question in the room is, what inspired you to make a poop tracking game? Were the existing poop tracking apps not gamified, social, or engaging enough for your taste?
Yolanda Xing: It came from a very feminist view, because I've always tracked my period with the Apple Health app. And, often when women had their period, their poo will get very watery. It's almost like a diarrhea. And I feel like it's should be recorded somewhere.
And when I see all the categories in Apple Health, it has everything from the amount of water you drink to even the time you wash your hand. It has all that very detailed categories, but it doesn't have a section for poo. And so I found that to be very surprising and so why not just make it myself?
Steven: No, I'm glad you did. I think it's really special, and I think what's interesting about this app as opposed to any other tracker app is that, poo science, when I think about it, is usually more framed in tracking animals, identifying animal's tracks based off of scat.
So when I see it apply to humans, I wonder what's the scientific or medical basis of this science. During the onboarding of the app they, have you describe your poo both in shape and color as well as a few other identifying factors.
And I'm just curious, where you did your research where you pulled all that info from and what were you using to crunch the numbers. Mainly, what does a person's poop say about them? And is it a perfect science?
Just how much information can be mined from your poop, and if you've had any data brokers approach you about buying your user data.
Yolanda Xing: Yes, that's great question. From the early stage of the app we know that we're gonna gamified it, and the best way to gamify a poo tracking is to make sure that they track their poo every day.
And, with more research in that, we figured out that it is healthy for a person to have up to three poo a day or one poo three day. So it's all considered healthy, so it felt wrong that if we penalize the user for not pooping on a day and not able to save a streak. And so we decided to shift, the scientific part of the poo into a more rhythm tracking.
It's more important to have your poo consistently. If you have your poo every morning or every time before you go to bed. And so having that rhythm is more important than how much poo you actually do on daily basis, if that makes sense.
The gamified part was about rolling balls and stealing shit balls from your friends.
Steven: And have, has anyone approached you, like third party-wise, to acquire your user data?
You know, the data on your users' poops, um, be it a-
Yolanda Xing: no, no. Yeah, we're at a early stage. We were thinking about having models that allows users to take a photo of the poo and then we can analyze it, but then we figured out it was actually more difficult than it sounds.
Because, a user have to face the reality of what their poo looks like in their camera. That's might be a burden. I made the app so cute, it's for people to forget about the disgusting part of a poo, just wanted the cuteness of it.
Having a user take a picture of the real poo seems a bit extra. And also there is no good existing free model out there that enable us to do it, that's why we don't have the, the capture poo data. Yeah.
Steven: So there's no, like, free models on Hugging Face or anything for computer vision for poop tracking.
But is there any paid ones that you've seen?
Yolanda Xing: Paid one, yes. And... But still it's very hard because when you're on the toilet, the poo will get covered by toilet papers, and so the accuracy is, is to be determined.
Steven: True, true. So that's something that you would have to probably tutorialize your users on beforehand.
Yeah ...
Steven:
In recent news, the whole Taco Bell lettuce diarrhea fiasco with the parasite that gives people really explosive, really frequent diarrhea.
Yolanda Xing: Mm-hmm ...
Steven: with your users, did you kind of see a trend ahead of time?
Like, are you able to have so much data on people's poos that you actually can see trends in poo as time goes by? Oh. Like, on a global scale?
Yolanda Xing: That's a great question. Wow. Um, no, because we don't have that much data yet. The app is very newly made, so we're still in a marketing era to promote the app.
So no, we don't have enough data on that yet.
Steven: Speaking of being a new app, do you find people subscribing to Pro? Do you have a loyal user base? And if so, for the ones who do subscribe, what compels them the most, you'd say? What makes a whale or power user for a poo tracking app, a poo tracking game specifically?
Yolanda Xing: I haven't checked the stats into it yet. The app is really up in the App Store for, like, less than a week, and we barely do any advertisement on it. But I do have friends who who would... who say that they would love to pay pro for this app. And I think it's I think it's a lot of the personal support that they have on me and also the, the gamified part of the pool.
Yeah.
Steven: Interesting. Um, in terms of that gamification I, I think most of it revolves around your relationship, not with necessarily your poo, but your relationship with the app itself in terms of a relationship that you build between you and this characterized beetle , the scarab.
I mean, you get to name it, you get to adopt it, and then you get to talk to it in a little chat window. And the dialogue is written in a way that's very cutesy and honestly really well-executed.
I think maybe the reason is pooping is so personal and so intimate that, perhaps this was an intentional design choice to make players more comfortable sharing their poop details, because at least they're sharing it with something or someone that you trust and that you feel comfortable with.
Was that the reasoning behind it, or was there another reason why you decided to add a chat feature to the onboarding experience?
Yolanda Xing: Yes. The chat feature is to make onboarding more smooth and less time-consuming, because when it comes to a lot of health app, it'll ask you a lot of questions from, like, your name, your gender, to your habits and it can easily bored user out. And so having this little cute dung beetle that asks you this and that, it makes the user more engaged and more like talking to a creature rather than talking to a phone and giving all my information away.
Steven: So you would give your information away to a mascot, but not just a, a faceless app, essentially.
Yolanda Xing: Yeah. Yeah.
Steven: And I guess one thing I'm kind of curious about is, during the onboarding as well, the game prompts the user to " describe the work", the work referring to poo. What are your thoughts on pooping as a form of labor? And can poop also be a form of love or something else?
Are there plans for the app in the future to characterize poop in different ways, especially with social functions?
Yolanda Xing: Yes, definitely.
We found that couples really loved our app, and it is a loving language for them to talk about their poo. Having an app that opens up the conversation between them is like having a icebreaker for couples to open up themself to each other
Steven: Do you ever plan on, if this app is successful enough maybe selling a an actual piece of hardware, that attaches to a bathroom, like a toilet seat and weighs the user before and after their movement to track the color and the shape while poop happens before wipe so that it's all automated?
Is that something that you think would improve the app, or is the act of recording and jotting down and journaling your poops in itself the exercise that you think is good for this experience?
Yolanda Xing: That is a good one, 'cause that was my initial thought when it comes to poo tracking. I was thinking to maybe start on Kickstarter having a sensor attached to the toilet that tracks everything.
But then I decided not to do it because it is too much into the details for an average user to be able to know so many thing about their poo. And for stats like color, we could obviously see it with our eye. We could eyeball it 'cause we know what a poo normally looks colored like. And for stats like weight it is really less important for a person to know exactly what their poo weighs.
It's more about if they could feel that s- the, the poo they had, is it, uh, more than usual or less than usual, or it is same as usual? So if you see our app and once you log it, uh, there is a log for the size of the poo, and we will never say small, medium, large. We have it as medium, little or heroic. Medium as in it's your usual dump. So that makes the experience more personal, because it feels less of tracking all the stats behind your poop, but more is it something that had changed?
Steven: So, I know that the Scarab offers a lot of insights. Is that something that is more rules-based and state-based, or is it something that's a little bit more AI ingested?
Yolanda Xing: The free version is rule-based and the pro version will have a cross-lif lifestyle check for you, and for that one, later on we're gonna ask permission for your, health record on other apps to see if there's any intersection going on there, and those will be AI analyzed.
Steven: And do you think this will, this app eventually will enter into the medical territory that'll be used for nurses and doctors giving to their patients? Tracking poops is very real, especially post-surgery. So especially if it's a, you know, a bowel surgery or something. Or is this gonna be more on the fun side of, like, entertainment and mindfulness?
I know that there is a disclaimer that this isn't completely medical certified- by any party, but would you hope for it to be in the future?
Yolanda Xing: No, I'll keep it more gamified and more entertainment among friends.
Yeah. Medical it'll be a totally different area you can't have an app that's, that say to the user that, "Oh, you could use this for medical ." That is against some rules in the States. So I'll, I'll keep it gamified.
Steven: What was the inspiration for stealing other people's poop?
Like, where did that idea come from? Was that before or after the, the ball rolling?
Yolanda Xing: It happened at the same time. Me and my team pretty much had the idea of the app done in one day, and the stealing ball mechanism is not new. It is a very viral thing to do back 2008, where it was throughout the Chinese internet of having your own little farm and you plant your food, and your friends can steal or help you grow your virtual garden.
Steven: So do you say that you're pretty well attuned to internet Chinese culture on Weixin or QQ and is there any intersections for pooping in particular for Chinese culture and pooping, on the internet right now?
Yolanda Xing: Right now, no. No. Yeah, the inspiration was from, it's, called Toucai in, um, Chinese internet history. Yeah, it was a pretty big social movement even. Yeah.
Steven: Interesting.
I'm just kind of curious about the development of Scarab. You mentioned you had team members. Who's worked on it, how long did it take to get to this point, and what were some challenges?
Yolanda Xing: It was me and a partner. It's a friends project, and we built this up in a month. Mostly be me designing and my friend coding it.
A lot the challenges is on the feedback loop for users because, again, we don't want the app to feel penalized, because poo is so personal, we don't want anyone who would criticize on someone's habit. And so we take extra care to make sure that anyone can enjoy this app no matter if they didn't poo enough. And, um, we're afraid that having that emotion in it will make them fake their data just for getting more balls. It need a balance between having it to be a real tracking app and having the gamification that doesn't ruin the tracking purpose.
Steven: So the challenge essentially is more of a balancing issue. It's more trying to stop people from abusing the honor system and diarrhea maxing?
Yolanda Xing: Yep
Steven: All right.
Are there any other future updates planned or bathroom related projects going forward? Are you very passionate about poop holistically, or is it just for this specific project that you wanted to explore that?
Yolanda Xing: Yes, the, we have a list of things that we want to do in the app, there's so much. We're definitely gonna do a couple mode for the app, where you could assign a player and you two can see your partner's poo history.
And also, we are thinking about having some real time interactions where when you log a poo, maybe your friend, if your friend also log a poo and you two can match at that time instantly and able to play a mini-game right away.
We're thinking to have some magical moments where you and your friend are both on a toilet and you guys can have fun.
Steven: Honestly, that does make sense, if both players are simultaneously on the toilet, they are both available to play games on the toilet. It might be a nice little respite from work.
Yolanda Xing: I view toilet time as like a self-reflecting reflection time.
It's very rare that in such a busy, modern society we're able to have a time to just sit somewhere, looking blankly for, like, two, three minutes. Even though we all have the internet and then the world involves so much, we still need to poo like all animals.
Pooping is viewed as something that is disgusting that we always wanted to hide from but it's also magical. Poop also opens up a lot of conversation and brings people closer to each other.
Steven: I think toilets really are the last bastion of mindfulness.
How you would describe the essence of Scarab?
Yolanda Xing: The inspiration is from, woman period, but then, the a- the application lands on all purpose.
Steven: So usually period tracking apps let you know when you might expect different phases might come up cycle-wise. Does your app as well predict when you might have your next poo based off of the available rhythm?
Yolanda Xing: We're working on it, yes.
Steven: Is there any parting message you'd like to get out to the world?
Yolanda Xing: Track your poo. It's a act of love, track your poo with your friends, it's a method of saying I love you to friends. That is a very private experience, and I hope everyone has, has a friend or a partner who they feel comfortable sharing their poop with.
Steven: Do you think you could make a friend j- purely by sharing poops with them, like a pen pal, but for poop, like a poop pal? And could that potentially be a future update where maybe you, you match with someone, not like a dating way, but more like a friend abroad and you just connect purely through text chat and poop updates?
Yolanda Xing: Well, that would be weird.
Steven: But that would kind of shortcut the intimacy... you just, you skip, you skip ahead and just go to the poop part.
Yolanda Xing: Yeah. That's I won't do it, but if any, if, but if anyone wanted to try, I I would like to know how it works.
Yeah.
Steven: Well if anyone's out there I'll share my personal poop code and anyone can track my poops. You'll see it here first on Toilet Game Studies!
All right. Well, thank you so much Yolanda. I really appreciate your time. It's great having you.
Yolanda Xing: Thank you. Thank you for having me.