Building the recognition tool we needed
Every workplace has its rituals. Posting to the watercooler. Catching up in the alumni channel. The Slack emoji you fire off when a teammate saves you twenty minutes on a deploy. Recognition is one of those things that sounds simple until you try to systematize it. It either works beautifully or becomes another subscription you forget you’re paying for.
For a while, HeyTaco was helping us fill this gap in Happiness. Unfortunately, this tool turned out to be a limited, uncompelling, expensive foundation that didn’t quite meet the high mark we expect in our division.
The Taco Problem
HeyTaco does one thing and does it fine: you send tacos, people receive tacos. The rewards were underwhelming and not focused on contributing to the cultural goals that the tool should be designed for. Virtual AI stickers are meaningless, Branded merch is fine, and Gift cards that go against the Automattic Creed. The reward catalog felt like it was designed to look impressive in a sales deck rather than to actually motivate a team. When your recognition system’s biggest payoff is a digital sticker, you start to wonder what the point of the system is.
HeyTaco also requires there’s the per-seat pricing of, at minimum $3 user/month. For a tool that essentially counts emoji reactions, the cost scales in a way that’s hard to justify, especially when your goal is growing adoption and recognition habits across the organization.
As for customization? It is extremely limited. This is an additional concern when the Automattic culture is a vital pillar of how we do business. We need need tools and partners that work with us in the ways that we work.
These aren’t dealbreakers in isolation. But stack them up and you start asking the dangerous question: what if we just built this ourselves?
So We Did
Wapuuchi started as a simple idea: what if I had a Wapuu Tamagotchi that ate my HeyTaco Tacos?
This lead to building a WordPress plugin with a Slack bot, a full dashboard, and a character system. Then, as we discussed sunsetting our use of HeyTaco, we started brainstorming how to not just replace HeyTaco, but build a foundation that supports Automatticians in the way that we work.
Your Channel, Your Rules
One important focus is on flexibility and choice. As a global company we need a tool that adapts to each team, and teammembers needs. In Wapuuchi, the recognition emoji can be chosen from a list of “Snacks.” Tacos, pizza, coffee, etc, your team picks the snack that fits your culture. You can also use numerous other settings to customize your expierence to work with you.
Building the Dashbaord
HeyTaco gives you a leaderboard, which is fine. Wapuuchi wants to do a bit more. The dashboard is where everything lives: your Wapuuchi, your stats, your friends, your badges, the shop. This should provide a nice home and landing place for recognition based functionality, as we build on this foundation to support a positive culture of communication and recognition across the oorganization.
Meet Your Wapuu
Connecting with the roots of the project, you can still adopt your own Wapuu of course! Feed it by sending or receiving snacks, and unlock Wapuu friends as you engage with the recognition culture enabled Wapuuchi.
The Shop
Instead of redeeming recognition for gift cards and AI slop, earned currency allows you to customize your Wapuu, with many additional ways to spend your snacks in the works.
Why Build When You Can Buy?
Fair question. The honest answer is that buying wasn’t giving us what we needed, and the gap between what we wanted and what was available was wide enough to justify the effort.
HeyTaco is a fine product for teams that want something simple and don’t mind the constraints. But if you want your recognition system to reflect your culture rather than a vendor’s template, you have to own it.
Wapuuchi is opinionated software built for Automattic and distributed culture, and that’s precisely why we are optimistic it can pick up where HeyTaco left off.
What’s Next
We’re not done. Incremental updates are the plan, while we don’t have dedicated project time for this, we are passionate about the goal and the current emphasis around the culture of recognition.
The taco era was good while it lasted. But recognition deserves more than a single emoji and a gift card catalog. It deserves a system that feels like it belongs to the people using it.
Goodbye, taco. Hello, Wapuu.
Stay restless.