Creating a new habit can be daunting. It’s difficult to go from zero to sixty with a new behavior. It’s even harder to be consistent with a new behavior over time. That’s why we created Stick to it! mode.
The idea came from one of our clients who tried using our Streak mode to build healthy habits in his employees. Streak mode counts the number of days in a row a user meets a daily goal, for example: 5,000 steps per day. Ideally, you meet as many daily goals in a row as possible.
However, this client quickly realized that many of his participants felt demoralized when they missed a day, and felt even worse when they missed several days in a row. Turns out, hitting a hot streak was not as motivating as he had hoped. In fact, the idea was discouraging his users.
The client reached out to his customer success manager, Christina, to inquire if we had a way to reward daily accomplishments that may not occur consecutively. We got to work on a new challenge mode shortly thereafter.
While brainstorming how to design this challenge mode, we kept coming back to the idea of stickers, specifically the type of stickers you’d earn for a good grade as a kid.
Overall, the Stick to it! challenge mode still has a daily step or minutes goal. But rather than having to hit the goal every day of the challenge, users only need to hit the goal a set number of times throughout the challenge. For example, reach 20 active minutes in one day, 15 times over the course of a month-long challenge. It doesn’t matter if you miss a few days, the focus is to slowly complete a set number of achievements.
As hitting your goal may not be a daily experience, we wanted to make sure that every accomplishment would feel like a mini celebration. We introduced the idea of earning a sticker for every daily goal met. As you meet more goals, you gradually fill in a big, ‘ole sticker sheet. Go over the total goal requirement? You earn bonus stickers!
We also made it more fun to look at other user’s stats with larger profile pictures, easier to read data, and the ability to view everyone’s standings in the group.
We occasionally try to limit our data displays so users aren’t overwhelmed with thousands of users’ data, and also so our app doesn’t slow down when loading stats for large groups. However, we heard from end-users that they desired more detailed, individual-level data—something that was lacking in certain challenge modes. So, we introduced the ability to view all user scores or all related data by clicking a “view more” button. This brings users to a complete display of participant data on a separate page.
Give it a go! Can you Stick to it?
We recommend using this challenge mode after first running a team or group challenge mode. By doing this, you will have learned about the range of activity levels in your group before having them compete on an individual level.
Run a user reportor use our admin dashboard to view the average daily activity level of your user group. You’ll notice that most people fall into a low, medium or high activity level. Create three different Stick to it! challenges—one for each activity level. EX: High activity group has a daily goal of 12,000 steps. Medium group is 8,000 steps/day. Low activity group is 5,000 steps/day.
Further cater to these different groups by setting staggered total goal requirements. The high activity group aims to meet their daily goal 20 times over the course of the challenge. The medium group shoots for 15 and the low activity group should try to meet the daily goal 10 times.
We hope you like our latest challenge mode. If you have any feedback, please let us know—it may just lead to our next feature!
Note: This feature is available on our Pro and Ultimate plans.
