UX learnings from the best habit building apps
Takeaways from Noom, Elevate, Runkeeper, and Adopt Me! for creating behavior-changing user experiences.
Habit building products have a huge challenge to conquer — Change a user’s behavior. Sometimes that means making it easy for the user to get started. At other times, it might mean helping the user stay on the course. There are times when a user might need a little push to move on to the next level.
The best habit building apps recognize these distinct needs. They create user experiences that encourage the desired behavior.
Following are my UX takeaways from four such apps.
Noom — Making it easy to commit
Building a new habit is a longish path. A good design kickstarts the journey by making it easy to take the first step.
The first step for building a habit is to make a commitment. If you want to learn to play Piano, commit to 10 mins of practice every day. If you want to learn a new language, practice new words for 15 mins each day. If you want to become fitter, go for an outdoor activity every day, etc.
What holds a user back when a product asks for such a commitment?
At least one of the following concerns stand in the way:
- Lack of trust in the product’s intention (“How do I trust this new app?”, “What if it’s another sign-up tactic”).
- Lack of trust in the product’s expertise (“Do they know what they are talking about?”, “Have they done it before?”).
- Lack of trust in one’s own capability (“What if I can’t keep up?”, “What if it becomes too difficult down the road?”).
Noom is a weight loss app that addresses all of the above concerns by using empathy, expertise, and social proof.
One of the major concerns of their audience is falling back to old habits and regaining weight. Their core value proposition of “Lose weight for good” assures users that they have a deep understanding of the problem area.
They also recognize that losing weight is about channeling the mind towards a healthier lifestyle. Their offering of ‘Retrain your brain with Noom’ emphasizes the significance of a lifestyle change.
The Noom app displays testimonials from successful users twice during the onboarding. This assures users that others like them have done it before.
Addressing true fears and emotions is an essential part of a great user experience. By doing so, Noom makes it a no-brainer for the users to commit to their fitness goals.
Adopt Me! — It’s all about the streak
All kids I know are hooked to the online gaming platform called Roblox. It lets users, mostly kids program games and play games created by other users. Adopt Me! is one of the most popular games on the platform. It’s an unusual choice for this article. Unlike the other apps in our list, Adopt Me! is not typically acknowledged as a habit-building app. Its UX makes gaming a habit nevertheless.
What I find most powerful is their emphasis on building a streak. They encourage gamers to log in every day, even if they can’t spare more time to play. A mere few seconds of login rewards them with game currency each day. As they build a streak, they start receiving additional gifts. The longer the streak, the bigger the reward. On day 5, they receive a ‘small’ gift. On day 10, a ‘big’ gift. On day 25, a ‘massive’ gift. On day 30, they receive a cracked egg that hatches into a pet. As the game is all about acquiring and raising digital pets and toys, these rewards work like a charm. Gamers are committed to not breaking their streak.
By compelling users to show up every day, Adopt Me! confirms what the habit-building gurus have been advocating. It’s all about showing up. Building a streak is more important than long engagement sessions, even for a gaming platform.
If you can’t learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Master the art of showing up.
— James Clear in Atomic Habits
Elevate — Pushing a little harder each time
What do you have a better memory of, a cliffhanger in a Netflix series that you are currently watching or a series that you already finished watching?
Most people would remember the cliffhanger better. The Zeigarnik effect, named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, infers that people have a tendency to complete tasks that they start. Lack of closure wastes cognitive effort. An unfinished task keeps bothering us until we finish it.
Elevate, the mind-training app uses psychology to gamify learning and help users push a little harder each time.
For example, one game in the app aims at improving brevity. It requires users to clip a redundant phrase in a sentence, in succession. An incomplete origami puzzle is also shown on the screen. If the user answers correctly, it adds a piece to the puzzle. If the user answers incorrectly, the new piece of the puzzle fails to show up. At the end of the exercise, the origami puzzle remains incomplete if the user didn’t perform well enough.
As we know from the Zeigarnik effect, it’s unsettling for users to leave the puzzle incomplete. Most times, you’d want to try again, try harder, and complete the puzzle.
The app uses similar teasers to push users and get better at writing, reading, Math, and listening skills.
Runkeeper — Creating an unconventional streak
Building a streak is a basic building block of creating a new habit. All the apps mentioned above, Noom, Roblox, and Elevate urge users to show up every day. After all, it’s no streak if you miss a day. Right?
Not in the Runkeeper world.
As much as runners love to head out for a run 7 days a week, rest days are essential for recovery. Runkeeper, the running app, understands this need.
Instead of nudging their users to run every day, Runkeeper encourages users to log 31 (combination of running and non-running) activities in a month. A user is also free to log in to multiple activities in a day.
For example, swimming a few laps, going for a biking trail, core training, or running, all add towards their 31-day streak.
By introducing a twist to streaks, Runkeeper keeps its users engaged with the app while encouraging active recovery.
The lesson here is evident. A deep understanding of user needs helps design a product to make it work for the user. Even if that means including exceptions and tweaks to the usual way of doing things. All this without compromising engagement with the product.
