🛣 Checklist: 6 tips for building products that promote good
habits Tips for designing a product that people love, by promoting positive transformation in their lives:
Tactics Why / How
Identify the Positive Positive habit triggers are the emotional or psychological cues that Trigger prompt people to engage in their desired habit.
To design a product that promotes such habit-building, first, identify
the possible emotional or psychological cues that prompts people to seek out a good habit.
Try putting yourself in their shoes: Observe yourself during the day and notice your emotions, thoughts, and environmental cues that could initiate your desired behavior.
Actionable Design small, achievable actions within your product that contribute Micro-Wins to the positive habit.
Celebrate these micro-wins to keep people motivated.
For example: Apple iBooks gives you a notification when you pass your reading goal for the day (the default is only 5 minutes!)
Reward Progress, Acknowledge progress towards habit goals with variable rewards. Not Just Completion Think badges, streaks, or milestone celebrations, but avoid relying solely on features that encourage endless loops (like excessive notifications, which reduce the psychological impact of each reward).
Focus on Mastery Structure the product to create a sense of accomplishment as people
develop the habit. The STRONG (weightlifting tracking) app highlights personal bests and percentage increases of volume each week as you
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Encourage Empower people to personalize their experience and set their own Autonomy goals (thus leveraging the Endowment Effect).
The product should be a tool that supports their self-directed
habit-building journey.
Promote Social An additional support for people's habit-building journey comes from Support the power of social connection.
Integrate features that allow people to connect with friends or build an
accountability group within your product — This can involve progress sharing, encouraging messages, or even simply showing your friend’s activity to encourage friendly competition.
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https://growth.design/case-studies Page 6 of 7 💡 Want to use psychology to build better products? If you're looking for more ways to sharpen your product skills using psychology, check these out:
Product Psychology Course.
If you want to learn how to use psychology to create better experiences for your customers, check out our course: https://growth.design/course
Cognitive Biases Cheatsheet.
100+ cognitive biases and design principles that affect your product experiences. Tons of product examples, tips, and checklists to improve your user experience: https://growth.design/psychology —Dan Benoni & Louis-Xavier Lavallée
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