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In this month's update: User-created challenges, new & improved Streak mode and how to prevent cheating in a step challenge.
Feature Highlight
New & Improved Streak Mode!
Streak mode got a makeover with a fun, new flame sticker for every day you meet your goal! We've placed a higher importance on the number of days in a row you’ve reached a daily challenge goal. You'll also see friendly comments that cheer you on as your streak gets longer and longer. Create a streak challenge today to see the enhancements!
Push Notifications for Friends & User-Created Challenges
If enabled, users will be notified when they receive friend requests, someone accepts their request, someone sends them a challenge invite or accepts their challenge invite—how fun!
User-Created Challenges Report
Keep your finger on the pulse. Learn which users created a challenge, what type of challenge they ran, the goal and how many participants were involved.
Challenges Now Limited to 90 days or Less
Maximize engagement by optimizing your challenge duration. MoveSpring clients have found the highest engagement during challenges that last between three and six weeks. As a result, we have limited the duration of challenges to be 90 days or less. Questions? Reach out to your customer success manager.
FEATURE HIGHLIGHT
NEW! User-Created Challenges
User-Created Challenges allows your users to make their own challenges in the MoveSpring mobile app. All clients will have the option to enable or disable this feature on their account.
Allowing users to create their own challenges gives your participants a sense of ownership, and in turn, organically grows a group of internal wellness champions. Challenge creators will encourage participation among their closest colleagues and boost overall engagement across your organization. Think about it as grassroots wellness.
More importantly, User-Created Challenges helps you save time. Don’t fret about the breaks in between your challenges; your users will have many reasons to maintain engagement and activity when there are continuous opportunities to compete with those they know best.
How to turn this feature on
- Go to admin.movespring.com
- Navigate to your Account Settings by selecting Manage Account on your Admin Dashboard
- Go to App Settings in the lefthand nav
- Toggle User-Created Challenges ON
ACTIVATE FRIENDS
A friendly reminder, this feature is now available to all MoveSpring clients! If you want this feature available to your users, the admin account owner must turn it on. You can enable this feature by navigating to the Account Settings, then App Settings of the MoveSpring Admin Center. Once enabled, users can add friends within your organization for ongoing, daily competition via a friends-only leaderboard. Users can also send friends direct messages in chat and view more of their profile.
CHALLENGE IDEA
I Woke Up Like This!
A set morning routine can help people feel less frazzled, give them a sense of purpose, improve emotional health and the ability to cope with stress, as well as reduce anxiety. In this challenge, encourage participants to create a morning routine or improve their existing A.M. activities.
- Modules: Stick to It!
- Duration: 30 days
- Goal: 30 active minutes a day, 15 times
Amp up the fun with these suggested content posts and rewards ideas!
PROGRAMMING TIPS
How to prevent cheating in a step challenge.
One of the most disheartening issues for both admins and users is when cheating, or accusations of cheating, disrupts an otherwise fun competition experience. While there’s no way to absolutely prevent dishonest activity, there are some simple tricks that can prevent cheating from stealing away the fun.
Reward participation and engagement over performance
If there’s a budget for rewards, make sure there are a variety of ways to win, and emphasize participation over performance. For example: average at least 6,000 steps during the challenge to be entered into a raffle drawing for a week’s worth of free, healthy lunch. Using our engagement report, you can also reward participants who were most active in chat, synced their data frequently, and consistently interacted with content you posted.
With this system, there’s less concern over who has the the most steps and less speculation on how large, daily step counts were achieved.
Choose your step challenge mode wisely
Be selective about challenge type and goal. Leaderboard is always a user favorite, but is also the challenge mode that is most likely to result in cheating.
Leaderboard allows participants to see a straightforward ranking of who has the most steps or active minutes. Use Leaderboard sparingly in smaller groups of participants and always pair it with a second challenge like Target, where users must reach a minimum step goal, and rewards can be distributed to more than just the single person with the most steps. That way, the focus isn’t solely on who is number one. Additionally, in large groups, it becomes impossible to unseat the number one stepper, as you'd have to pass up many other users on the way.
For more on this topic, including how to reach out to users suspected of cheating, head to the MoveSpring Blog here.
### WELLNESS NEWS**
How Microexpressions Can Make Moods Contagious
By Liana Simstrom
Obvious emotions such as crying and laughing are easy enough to see, but did you know your brain is able to pick up on minute signs of emotion that your eyes may have missed? Your body may even be mirroring these hidden emotions in others more often than you think. Read on for a brief exploration of microexpressions and their effect.
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