How do I use psychology and gamification to motivate the user to train?
Product Design
Behavioral Design
1 month
Arima Crossfit
It's Wednesday, 6 pm. It's a miserable day and it looks like Paula won't be training today either.
"Another month with credits to spare."
This pattern is repeated among Harima Crossfit box users. Users start out motivated but after the initial weeks they train less and less, until they eventually disengage.
The challenge is not to redesign a crossfit app.
The challenge is to design an experience that gives the nudge when the user needs it most.
How can we get Paula to train, even when motivation is flagging?
We begin with a question…
We get Paula to make a commitment, to verbalise her purpose, activating the Commitment and Consistency Bias.
Commitment and Consistency Bias: by making a promise, even a small one, the user is more likely to follow through (R. Cialdini's Principles of Persuasion).
The way in which we present information also influences the success of these messages. A good practice is to visually show the user's progress and what is missing to complete their commitment. In this way we activate the Zeigarnik Effect and the Target Gradient Effect.
Zeigarnik Effect: we feel uneasy about leaving tasks unfinished.
Target Gradient Effect: people are motivated by how far they have left to reach their goal, not how far they have come.
I use gamification to incentivise the user to train.
Gamification, by including rewards, achievements and challenges, activates the brain's reward system, releasing dopamine, the hormone of pleasure and motivation.
By training, each user gets points in 5 different skills, depending on the training. Each month there is a ranking with different divisions and the athletes with the most points move up to the next division.
Challenges to building community
Crossfit is a sport that generates community, and this can be encouraged to transform it into a business. The app presents challenges that one user can send to another, setting a specific date and time in the box.
Using the social norm, ‘if others go, I go’ and the feeling of belonging ‘I am part of the box and I train with others who also make an effort’.
What happens when the user runs out of credits?
This is great news, because they have fulfilled their commitment, so we will be there to reward them with a gift voucher.
When it's time to renew their tariff, we remind them that they have run out of credits this month, we make visible the gift voucher they have used and thus activate the principle of reciprocity.
Principle of reciprocity: we feel obliged to return the favours you have done us.
I facilitate the user's main action
Interviews with users show me that the main action the user wants to perform is ‘Book a class’ so I design an intuitive interface that facilitates this action.
Another of the desired actions is to be able to write down their results, see their progress and for the rest of the colleagues in the box to see them as well.
