Gas App is #1 in the App Store. The app is simple: answer polls about friends, and get credit (flames) when you are picked.

Most people can literally not use it yet, so I wanted to see what we could learn:

Onboarding Flow

The Gas onboarding flow isn't short... but every piece of information gathered is critical to the product.

It's all about the questions...

Gas asks you about your friends...

... in many different ways:

... and some smart as heck growth strategies...

Personalized invites:

Sign Up Friction & Contacts Optimization

We love 7-day challenges at SnapHabit. Our app is optimized for these short courses. But we also know that simply running your challenge through email can be a fantastic, low-friction way to drive traffic.

Email courses are often used by marketers wishing to establish online businesses due to the fact that it's simple, cheap, and easy-to-control. However, despite these merits, making good and effective email courses takes experience and knowledge. We have recently researched 30+ email courses during the past two weeks and summarized these five details that marketers should be aware of when making their email courses.

#1 Quick and Easy Set-Up

On the internet, people's attention is short-lived. When someone visits your site, his/her attention and interest is only temporary. The passion may quickly die or be distracted by something else. This means that if you want people to register for your course, make it quick and straightforward.

Like the example, you would like to have the registration box obvious on your page and requires minimal information. Another thing people often forget is the first email. DON'T LET THEM WAIT.

Test your site before you launch your course. After registration, the first email should be sent within seconds because that's when people are still interested. Of all the courses that we enrolled ourselves, we have found two courses that made us wait for minutes until sending their first email. To be honest, this may not be their fault since they probably use a third-party email service that handles the automated email sequence.

#2 Be Clear About the Investment and Reward

Although email courses are usually free because they are marketing tools to attract prospect customers, it doesn't mean there is no cost for the customers. Committing to your course involves time investment and other cost; thus, you would have to make the visitors feel that they are getting adequate rewards from their investment.

On your course website, you should be upfront about it, and be clear about it. Let the visitor know from the get-go that they only have to invest a short amount of time every day in learning the knowledge they are interested in.

One of the mistakes we have found many email courses have is that they are too vague about the takeaways. 31% of the email courses we have researched didn't make a clear first impression about what people can learn from the course. These courses use very generic catchphrases like "learn all the secret about trading in 7 days".

This doesn't help because, first of all, they don't build credibility. Secondly, visitors who come to your website usually don't want to learn everything you teach. Rather, they have a specific need in mind. They would like to see if the course aligns with their interests.

What you should do, instead, is have a shortlist of key things the prospects would be able to know or do after they finish the course as you guided. These specific takeaways attract people to enroll in your course, and they help the prospects set up achievable goals that increase anticipation.

17% of the courses have clear timelines on their website. This is a great way to communicate your course takeaways clearly, plus it will make your course more structured, which we will talk about in the next part.

#3 KISS - Keep It Simple and Structured

In order to give your product/service more exposure, you would like to have the prospect keep interested and learning your course. This means that your course content has to intriguing. Two basic rules here are making the knowledge simple and the content structured. This is to make it easier to learn and build a logical flow so that your prospects are more likely to continue as you guided.

From our research, all email courses limit their content to 10 to 30 minutes daily reads, while most limit to less than 15 minutes. You should design your daily content within the same length range. Not only should your content be short, but they should also appear to be short as well. So, it would be best if you always avoided long text since it makes your course a lot more challenging than it really is.

We have found three simple and useful designs that you can easily learn and adopt in your email course:

1. Simple Bullet Points

2. Text Blocks

3. Visual Aids

Using these simple tools to design your email course, you would already be outstanding among others. We have found out that 55% of email courses use long text with no or barely any editing, and 79% use no visual aids.

For more advanced designers or editors, you can make your own instruction visual aids like infographics, gifs, and videos. However, this is not an easy task as it seems to be. In reality, people use different email services, so your cleverly designed emails might not appear as you wanted when your prospect opens them.

#4 Don't Forget to Sell

In the first three points, we have mainly talked about making your customers intrigued by your content. BUT, your goal is not to provide them with free education (although that would be a great mission). You are here to sell. Throughout your course, you should intermittently embed your promotional messages within your content. This is the tricky part. You can make it obvious that you are advertising your product/service or making it subtle.

This is the crucial part of your email course, transforming the prospects into actual customers. Here, the safe bet is to use the simple discount strategy, but you probably are more creative than that.

After studying the email courses, we would like to share the common methods that other email marketers have used to incorporate marketing messages in their email courses. You may borrow their ideas to make yours.

1. In-text Mentions

Simply mentioning your product/service when covering related issues.

2. Bonus Content

Advertise your product/service as extra resources for the prospects.

3. Direct Emails

Send direct sales/marketing emails to your prospects selling your products/services.

#5 Stay Away From Spam Box

The trash box probably is the most heinous villain for email marketers. To have an effective email course, you most certainly want to avoid being put into spam box. This might be a little more technical than branding and messaging. There are some ways to help you keep away from the spam box.

Use a trusted email service provider

Many email service providers highly associated with marketing emails are usually blacklisted by commonly used email services like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. You may want to test if your email service is blocked.

Use more humanly email address

When sending emails, don't use some email address like nonreply@bestservice.com or bot123@yourtrustedoc.com. Emails from these addresses are more likely to end up in spam.

Careful wording and visual-editing

Build your email like you are actually writing them. There are many email templates and automation services, but you should always make your content unique and special.

There are a lot more things you can do to keep your emails out of spam. If you'd like to learn more, you can find a lot of resources on the internet.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading! These five bits of advice will help you build better email courses. But, you should also know that building an email course is not a one-off effort. You need to spend time maintaining it too. Learn from your feedback and data, study your customer groups, and revise your content. With these efforts, you will see a steady stream of new customers.

SnapHabit recently conducted interviews with current beta users as well as potential users in the demographic of women ages 18-25.

The question? How these users approach habit building.

The goal? Learn how we can better build an experience that supports them on their journey to a more fulfilling life.

The learnings? They’ve might have been hesitant towards habit trackers in the past, but they love how-to's.

Why should I care about how-to's?

Honestly, I didn't before, but after these interviews, it feels irresponsible to not. Every interview began with us asking them about their current goals, where they got inspiration for new habits, but nearly every conversation ended in the same spot:

"I watch an embarrassing amount of YouTube; hold on, let me pull up my page."

Waiting on the other end of the phone, I was eager to learn what content they spent their time consuming. But by the third or fourth call, I wasn't surprised when the answer was some form of "How to X."

How to become a better morning person.

How to become a minimalist in 30 days.

How to start investing in your mid-twenties.

How to pick where to go to college in 3 steps.

How to get abs in 2 weeks.

The topics varied across interests, but all shared same foundational structure:

1. Stated end goal.
2. Specific time frame to achieve goal.
3. Five to ten simple steps on how to achieve it.
4. An image or story of a person who successfully completed it.

The process was typically presented under the guise of an YouTube influencer or pseudo-famous Instagram profile, but it was all the same science underneath: the science of building better habits.

Why do they delete habit trackers but keep spending hours watching how-to videos?

Sure, it's the same science, but it's two very different presentations of it. The one they choose? The one that is aspirational, approachable, and fun, of course.

I asked them to explain to me exactly what compelled them to read how-to guides and watch hours of YouTube how-to videos, and here's what they said.

1. It makes it seem easy.

Content creators seem to understand that our cognitive load is limited. Instead of presenting a fluffy rendition of how to become "the best version of ourselves," they've cut the habit building bs and, instead, offer clear and simple steps to achieving just about any goal.

"I like it when the content is specific so you know exactly what you have to do to succeed. If someone said 'I'm going to spend less time on my phone,' I wouldn't do that, but if someone said 'I am going to spend 30 min or less on Instagram,' I would do that."

A how-to guide is less ambiguous than general inspiration and never leaves a viewer wondering what's next. They know what's next: it's clearly outlined in steps 1-5.

2. It's inspiring to see real people do it.

If how-to lists offer a means to the end, then the people presenting it are the end. And these women are obsessed with getting there. When they come across how-to's on YouTube or Instagram, they are not just seeing a step-by-step guide, but they are watching a real person do it in real time.

"I get inspiration not from apps but from real people."

This aspect of humanity is the key to our obsession of how-to's. They show us someone who is already successful in doing it, and they offer us concrete steps we can follow to be just like them.

In one interview, a woman spoke of her love for Instagram stories explaining that it's a way for creators to say

"I am here and this is how I got here,"

and presumably "this is how you can too."

“I love watching their morning routine and habits. It's pretty simple stuff. 'I'm luck duh I can do this, it's not that hard,' but I like to watch them because they are inspiring and the way she presents it shows that it actually is doable, actionable, show us who we could be."

This is where how-to guides and videos do what apps and books struggle to achieve: they make the experience personal and offer us a visualization of the outcome. Really, they're just telling a story, and it's a compelling enough one to make us alter our personal behavior to ensure it becomes our story, too.

3. It makes me think I can do it, too. But it doesn't make me do it.

When asked about why they stopped using a meditation app in the past, one interviewee shared:

"It's hard for me to be told things to do. I don't like being felt like I am being restricted to things. That's why I didn't like the simulations [on the meditation app]"

She hadn't given up on habit apps all together yet, but suggested:

If I could do it on my own way,  I would be more open to practicing those habits. More prompting of ideas of how to do things rather than telling me exactly what to do.

Surprisingly enough, what did this user love if not tracking apps? How-to videos. Why? Because they satisfied her requirements:

1. Element of discovery and intrigue.
2. Inspirational but approachable and attainable.
3. Clear direction of action but not personally prescriptive.

How-to's are a beautiful example of  helping someone cultivate self-efficacy. They're simple and interesting enough where users want to do it, believe that they are personally capable of it, and most importantly, feel that it is their choice to do so.

"It's nice inspiration seeing other peoples routine, and saying 'Yeah, I could do that tomorrow.'"

If not how-to's, what do they want to see?

At the end of my conversations, it was clear where the interest stood: more how-to's. Still, I couldn't help but think that the same thing that drove these women to their love of how-to's (ease, effective storytelling, and a sense of self-efficacy) could be present itself in another experience.

So, I asked them of what they'd want to see more. The answers I got back were interesting, to say the least:

1. More of it. More curated "how-tos" across different interests and personal to their own lifestyle.
2. More intuitive experience. An easier way to discover new and interesting things. A Pinterest just for how-to's, essentially. But still with real people doing the sharing.
3. More organized. A way to curate everything they find across platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, articles, etc) into one home to keep track of it all and hold themselves to doing it.

You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

For the past seven years, I’ve been a consumer and self-diagnosed evangelist of ManRepeller. In that time, I've developed my style along side my favorite writers, debated what it means to grow up, and spent many of Instagram dms debating which writers my friends and I were most like.

And apparently, I wasn’t alone. We recently conducted SnapHabit user interviews in hopes to learn more about where Gen Z and millennial women get their inspiration ** out link to previous blog post here** for personal growth, and presumably habits. Many of them mentioned ManRepeller when asked to what content they most relate.

“The writing feels like I am listening to a cool person who is five years older than me that wants to have a conversation with me.”

Two months before we began talking to SnapHabit users, I received this email from ManRepeller.

More ManRepeller? duh. Need my phone number? sure thing. Reach me on a personal level that no other company ever has? of course, please.

My reasoning, similar to the sentiment of SnapHabit users, was simple: the words were relatable, it helped me navigate my life, and it felt like just another friend texting me.

But my choice to enroll in the ThoughtLine text service was actually pretty steeped in science. I might have just stumbled into the best example of behavioral science yet.

If you're looking to apply more behavioral science to your user approach (or just want more people to read your texts) here's what we can learn from what ManRepeller did right:

1. Caught my attention from the beginning.

In behavioral science, the Halo Effect makes the case for a strong first impression, as we tend to make quick and big decisions based on little pieces of information.  Anchoring bias adds that we "anchor" all subsequent perceptions based on what we met first — no matter if it is correct or not. If we perceive something as beautiful the first time we see it, we place our bets that the rest will follow suit.

ManRepeller sure did make a first impression. Their debut Instagram introducing the ThoughtLine was witty, informative, and held just a bit of intrigue to keep me wondering what exactly I was watching. Better yet, it was fun.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Man Repeller (@manrepeller) on May 6, 2020 at 12:07pm PDT

2. Told me what I needed to know, and what I wanted to hear.

The ambiguity of it all begged my curiosity: what exactly is ManRepeller Thoughtline? I was told it's "whatever [I] need it to be," which honestly made me wonder. What do I need? What do I want? Could this be it?

Maybe, maybe not. But either way, the intentional progressive disclosure on their part made me want to figure out. Progressive disclosure, offering users a bit of information and allowing them to choose if and when they want more, shows that users are less overwhelmed if they are exposed to complex features gradually. They're also more likely to continue engagement simply in pursuit of this intrigue.

ManRepeller seemed to understand that our cognitive load is light and choice overload bias is a real thing. They avoided overdoing the mental effort required to complete their ask — sign up for ThoughtLine — and effectively avoided decision fatigue.

The sign up took  under a minute, and yet, still made me feel like I had some agency over it. They offered me a say in my experience, and I took it, gladly. Why? Because in allowing me to personalize my interaction with the service, ManRepeller created a mini Ikea Effect: I was already more invested in the outcome of my engagement because I had helped shape it. People seek opportunities where they can express their personality, feelings, or ideas and, in offering users these opportunities, you are building a stronger connection between them and the product.

They had also effectively created a self-initiation trigger by allowing me to customize the frequency of my notifications, which suggests that I am more likely to interact with prompts I helped set up myself.

3. Made me feel special

When I first signed up for the ThoughtLine, it was pre-launch. This eagerness awarded me a spot in the "MR Think Tank," which, as described in the initial email I received, promised me 1) agency in the influencing the future of ManRepeller 2) insights from the ManRepeller team and 3) "a number of benefits [I would] hear about very soon."

In a singular email, they had brought me into an exclusive community, offered me special access to a company I admired, and made me feel like I was apart of something bigger than myself.

If that's not textbook behavioral science enough, they also spiced it up with a bit of social norms pressure, noting that I was joining a "5,000 new members of Think Tank" and we had "already  contributed to a number of changes that will roll out in the coming weeks." The simple word choice of we changed the game. I was apart of something special, and we were in it together.

4. Brought in familiar faces and made it fun.

As soon as the texts start rolling in, I recognized the names. I had been religiously reading their words the past seven years! Every text specified who was sending, resembled their writing style, and made me feel the same way their articles had. It was comfortable, relatable, and inviting.

This feeling of familiarity plays off of the mere exposure effect which says we are more likely to see something as favorable simply because we've seen it before and engrained a sense of self-efficacy and ease with it. We know it, and we know we like it.

The texts are also funny, making them more relatable and easier to remember. From an engagement and revenue perspective, it's a super smart move. The affect heuristic is a mental shortcut we use to make quick decisions by relying on our current emotional state. Texts are immediate, and we naturally rely on our quick, emotional response to decide how to engage. ManRepeller is attempting to ensure that my emotional state at the moment of interaction is relaxed, joyful, comfortable, and yet, on my toes and ready to consume more.  

Bad mood? Not worth my time opening the text from some stranger.  

Okay mood, smiling from first line offering a familiar name and funny CTA? Maybe there's something in it for me today.

If ManRepeller can act as a behavioral scientist, anyone can.

At its core, behavioral science is about understanding how people behave and why they make the choices they do. With the release of ThoughtLine, ManRepeller did just that: understood my instinctual inclinations, recognized my limited cognitive space, and catered to my immediate emotions.

ManRepeller proved that behavioral science is not always found steeped in evidence based RTCs. Sometimes, the best behavioral science experiment is waiting for you in your unread texts.

In the last two decades, behavioral science has stepped out of the academia driven university halls and into, well, pretty much everywhere. The field, which encompasses economics, psychology, and neuroscience and works to understand why people behave the way they do, now boasts over 300 behavioral teams across a variety of teams and organizations. Everyone from policy makers to business leaders are catching on to the competitive edge offered by the field and asking “how can I play the behavioral science game?”

At SnapHabit, we're building an experience to better help people live more fulfilling lives. It's a pursuit steeped in behavioral science, and yet no one on our team has formal behavioral science training.

We're inadvertently operating in the field, but I wanted to better understand how others got their start. I spoke to leaders from  ideas42, Behavioral, Insights Team, The Behavioralist, and other firms and here's what I found.

1. It’s a field driven by “academic experts.”
2. You either stumble upon behavioral science unexpectedly or fight for it in the form of a dissertation.

As an undergraduate, the PhD was tabled for now. As for the stumbling, it felt pretty hard to “stumble” when I was actively pursuing it at every corner. My inbox was filled with the best behavioral science newsletters, my reading list was too long to ever be crossed off, and I aggressively searched Linkedin to understand how these expert behavioral scientists got their start.

I am not the stumbling type. When the answer was stumble or get a PhD, I didn't know what to do next. So, I kept asking questions. In effort to spare you from the personal cold call anxiety, here's what they said.

Q: From my Linkedin stalking, the field feels pretty academia rich. How can one get a foot in the door*?

*without going to grad school first.

A: Start where you are. Start with curiosity. As scary as that sounds, the right questions and a keen interest in people can drag your feet right through the door of behavioral science.

Surprisingly (and comfortingly), most of the people I spoke with did not answer this question with “I don’t know; I have a PhD in Behavioral Economics.” Instead, most said “actually, it’s really funny; I kind of just stumbled into the world of behavioral science.”

There it was again, “stumble.” Though the answer did not satisfy my type-A, one-track brain, it did bring a bit of excitement into the planning process.

Across all my conversations, it was evident that the field of behavioral science is interdisciplinary at its core. Community health, public policy reform, environmentalism, and education were just a few of the fields the leaders I spoke to named their “start.”

One explained that, for her, a career in behavioral science was the best of both worlds, saying “it allowed me to marry my interests of social impact and science.”

A lead at Facebook explained that applying these learnings at such a large scale "makes the work we do feel really important. We do work that makes a difference in how people communicate, connect, perceive each other."

No matter where they got their start, all shared this sentiment: "the work feels relevant" because it touches everything, and that's what keeps them coming back even, and especially, as the field evolves.

Q: But I'm an undergrad. What can I learn?

A: Anything you set yourself up to learn.

Though many universities still do not offer an established behavioral science or behavioral economics program, that does not mean that you can’t build a robust behavioral science experience in undergrad. In fact, my conversations argued that undergrad is the best time to learn about it because you have complete agency over your learning.

1. Take initiative in your undergraduate education. Don’t have an established program? Make one: tailor classes towards economics, psychology, and sociology.
2. Create your own projects. A business school professor once told me that “you can pick the topic of almost any class.” If a class includes a paper, presentation, or research project, relate it to your personal interest and add it to your portfolio. Behavioral science is about people, and people can be applied to nearly any project!
3. Talk to people. “The thing that sets your experience apart is having mentors, people to champion you, especially post docs or grad students because they actually have the time. Don’t go to the top person but go where one on one experience is.”
4. Not all learning happens in the classroom. One behavioral science executive I spoke to said “working in a restaurant was the best study of people I have completed.” Another urged, “Do your own research! Start your own project! People are all around us.” A grade is not needed to confirm learning. The key is being aware enough to explain how and what you learned.  

Q: What do you look for when hiring entry-level teammates?

A: People-person(s) who are eager to take on new perspectives, ask better questions, and are able to work across disciplines.

The work is two part: quantitative and qualitative. From the quantitative perspective, research was the obvious route. Many urged to reach out to professors, get into labs, and gain experience working in R and Stata.

"Just email and ask, you'd be surprised what they'll let you do," one leader urged.

Still, the quantitative push was always coupled with, “Anyone can be good at research, but also have to be good at the people side.”

The desired qualities on the people side stood out to me the most:

• Demonstrated experiences across disciplines, while understanding the strengths and limitations in own field (does not approach issues from just research or just design)
• Highly collaborative, team-oriented
• Experience in public speaking, writing, and storytelling
• Flexible and adaptable, not tied to an end-answer
• Project management experience
• Market research experience

Q: It's not new anymore; behavioral science is everywhere.  What does that mean for students today?

A: Keep calling, keep stumbling.

For most of the people I spoke with, when they were in college, kids weren’t reading the now-classic behavioral science reads and Dan Airely was not a household name (ok, maybe he still only is in my house?). For them, stumbling really was the most viable choice to enter the field.

Now though, organizations everywhere are starting up behavioral science teams. So, what does this mean for someone looking to get into the (not-so) new field? Most said, “keep doing what you’re doing.”

I might have preferred a step-by-guide on how to get where they were, but it was the same answer at the end of each call: keep calling.

Now I see that they didn't answer with a 1o-step plan because that isn't the answer. And maybe that's the best part of behavioral science: it's a field built for those who are excited enough to keep calling, driven enough to keep asking, and inquisitive enough to keep listening to stories to better understand.

Next step in attaining your pseudo-PhD in behavioral science?

Draft a cold call email, find people to message on Linkedin, take a deep breath, don't be creepy, and hit send.

"Magic Link", also know as password-less login, enables users to sign in by clicking a link. With no need to remember a password or prove email ownership, many people have hailed "Magic Link" as the perfect authentication solution.

How it works on SnapHabit? After a user enters their enter email address, we direct them to their inbox to tap a link to sign in. Before diving into what went wrong, here's a snapshot of our authentication funnel:

• 11% of users required at least 4 magic-link emails before completing signing up.
• 18% of users never finished signup (clicked the magic link). On average, these users attempted signup twice, with several users submitting > 10 times.

... why would you use magic link, anyways?

Friends are core to SnapHabit, so the functionality to send a friend request is critical. Phone number or email felt like the cheapest way to support a unique identifier — as it could be used for both authentication and finding a friend.

Like most services, we first looked at using "Sign in with Google/Facebook". However, Apple recently adjusted App Store Guidelines... starting June 30, "apps that use a social login service ... must also offer Sign in with Apple"

Apple Sign In supports "Hide My Email", so many users who sign in with Apple would not have a meaningful email attached to their account. Asking for a user's email after they chose to "hide it" would be a poor user experience.

So in summary, we had 4 options for account creation:

1. Email + Password ... requires forgot password and users to prove email ownership
2. Support all third-party (Apple, Google, Facebook) ... and add a new unique identifier to allow friends to find each other, given email will not be sufficient
3. Phone number magic link ... we were relying on Expo (previously did not support phone-number auth), and we also felt emails would be a good/cheap tool for communication
4. Email magic link

Email magic link felt... perfect!  We built the login flow, complete with a custom email, instructional webpage, and deep linking. Hurrah, we had cracked the authentication funnel!

What went wrong and how we tried to solve

If you're interested in the technical details of how we implemented some of these fixes, let me know and we'll consider publishing.

1. Users clicking the link on another device.

Of 10 users we chatted with who had issues, 4 tried to click the link on another device. There are two routes to solving this:

• technical solution to support this behavior (clicking the link on desktop will authenticate the user on mobile)
• better instructional text

The latter was simpler, so we started with that:

And again.

And more.

2. User confusion about clicking a link to login

At least 2 people mentioned they simply did not understand that they needed to authenticate with email.  To solve this, we added

• call-to-action to open Apple Mail or Gmail
• disabled the "resend" button for 10 seconds, to encourage users to tap the mail CTA before attempting login again

3. Users entering the wrong email

Many users who did not finish finish signing up (eg. did not click email link) had accounts with a ".con" domain.  We added an notice to alert users of a possibly unintended typo:

... What's next

Despite attempting to solve 1, 2 and 3, our funnel drop-off is still larger than we'd like (~15% of users do not open the email correctly).

So after two months of solution hackery, we're cutting our losses and adding sign in with Google, Facebook and Apple options. If we still see users opting for email sign-in and failing to complete, we'll consider making the full-circle shift back to an email/password model.

I hope our sharing this painful journey can save you from taking a similar path!  Let me know if you have any questions or feedback at jake@snaphabit.app.

Don't have SnapHabit yet? You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

When I say influencer, I am not speaking of the celebrity with her own makeup line or even the most influential YouTube star, rather I’m talking about those who sit steadily at “a little bit famous.” You’ve seen their stories of their morning coffee routine, you and a friend probably did an ab workout with them on YouTube, and maybe you've even see them sharing snippets of their day on TikTok now. They’re not famous, but we watch them attentively enough that they might as well be.

When we starting asking SnapHabit users how their habits were going and how they were spending their time, something surprising showed. Female users aged 18-30, tended to spend just as much time speaking about their habits as they did where they got the inspiration for their habits: influencers.

As the subject of my research itself [I’m a Gen-Zer], I am pretty sick of talking about influencers. I get it: they’re changing the game, dominating feeds, and transforming trends. I hear it from marketers as much as I do my parents, and I see it every time I open my phone. The term itself feels pretty disconnected from the current creators and consumers, and I think we all need to be more precise about what and who we’re talking about. But my personal content saturation aside, it’s true: influencers are what everyone is talking about because they are what everyone is watching.

So, when interview after interview, influencers kept coming up, I couldn't keep silently rolling my eyes. Instead, I started asking why. I sought to figure out exactly why today’s young population is so drawn to this medium of consumption — and what it means for the rest of us. And given the increasing power of Gen-Z, my bet is that it means a lot.

What I thought I would learn:

1. It’s a tale as old as time: we are obsessed with influencers because we are obsessed with consumption and endless entertainment.
2. We’re looking for an escape: we follow influencers because they are nothing like us and offer a reprieve from our own lives.
3. It’s all downhill from here: we’re rotting our brain cells consuming all this content.
   

What I actually learned:

1. We go to influencers for entertainment, but we stay for information.
2. We are drawn to influencers who are like us, and we follow influencers who show us who we can become.
3. We’re actually learning a lot while engaging with influencers, and that’s why we like it (even if we don't know it).
   

1. We go to influencers for entertainment, but we stay for information.

“I like doing it [watching skincare routine videos] while I’m getting ready for the day and putting on my makeup … At first, I just came for the entertainment, but now I incorporate it into my own life and routine.”

She explained to me that she didn’t even really like makeup, but she really liked watching other people who did. A few videos later, she found herself not only entertained but also informed, so she kept watching and kept gathering new tactics to add to her own routine.

I spent hours talking to teenage girls about their favorite influencers and most watched content, and they all pretty much explained this same sequence of events:

1. A profile pops up on their Instagram explore page or YouTube home feed. It’s probably connected to their interest in fitness, fashion, food, or lifestyle.
2. The profile looks pretty and authentic; they click on it.
3. They watch the video that looks the most entertaining. Maybe a quick yoga video their friend suggested or a day in the life of a college girl.
4. A few videos later, they’re learning about building better habits, practicing 5 CEO’s morning routines, or even how to edit a better essay.

  

Instagram and YouTube's personalized discovery pages.

They told me they came because it was entertaining, but their viewing history showed that they stayed because they were absorbing information. It’s the most overlooked duality of our days: it can be fun and informative. Even better, they explained that watching other people do things actually held them more accountable for their own actions.

"It not only reminds you that these are your goals, but holds you accountable because you see other people out there with goals and they are working towards them,”

which suggests that the social proof is enough to make us work towards them, too.

2. We are drawn to influencers who are like us, and we follow influencers who show us who we can become.

“I like watching content from places like "A Week in My Life in New York" because I live in suburban Michigan so like "maybe that could be me one day.”

This language confirmed what I thought: we are drawn to influencers because they are something we are not. A classic escapism story. This is partly accurate; they are attracted to things just beyond their realm of experience, but it is not necessarily because they want to escape their own reality. Rather, they are watching what their reality could be.

In nearly every conversation, I heard the same language repeated: that could be me.

“I see an influencer who has really nice skin and think ‘wow I want good skin’ … I see an end goal in an influencer and want to get there.”

“I love watching her morning routine and habit videos because it's pretty simple stuff and I’m like ‘duh I can do this, it's not that hard’ …  the way she presents it shows that it actually is doable, actionable. It shows me who I could be”

Influencers offer a narrative of how to get from Point A to Point B; it’s informative, aspirational, and addicting.

“It feels like I am listening to a cool person who is five years older than me that wants to have a conversation with me, almost aspirational towards a different state of my life and I can look to them for future inspiration”

My assumption was, again, proved wrong. We aren’t obsessed with influencers because we want to escape our own life but because we want to see what our own lives could be — what we could make them be.

3. We’re actually learning a lot while engaging with influencers.

I’ve always taken the approach of a skeptical and out of touch dad when it comes to influencers and pretty much resolved that we were rotting our brains. While I was clearly off on my first two hypotheses, I was still confident about the end result: it’s a waste of time.

But again, my conversations suggested otherwise. The girls I talked to spent many hours consuming, yes, but they also learned a lot while doing so.

One girl explained to me that she was taught how to invest in her 20’s, another educated herself on the importance of sustainable consumption, and another was inspired to incorporate more body positivity tactics into her life.

What they were watching was informative and sticking with them more than any infographic or lecture ever had. I couldn’t help but ask why?

“It’s more fun to see real people do it, more human in a way."

“I can research 'self optimization techniques' all day, but if I see someone who is doing it and that it made their life better, I am more likely to do it myself.”

It’s not always intentional from the start, but rarely is it passive. These girls recognize they’re learning, they’re habits are changing, and they love it.

“I’m drawn to influencers who are factual, almost like a talking article; data based, science driven, seems smart.”

What does this mean for SnapHabit?

We're probably not going to be influencers, but maybe we can share the same features driving teenage girls to influencers to invite them to try new habits. After all, isn't that what they're already doing on these platforms? Learning a new skincare routine, picking up journaling, joining a 30 day yoga challenge ... discovering, incorporating, and learning new habits.

Here's what we learned is needed to spark the obsession of teenage girls today:

1. Invite them in with entertainment, and keep them there with information that is at the intersection of their interests but unfamiliar enough to keep them watching to learn more.
2. Be authentic and aspirational. They discover content they relate to but follow who they want to become.
3. If you are trying to teach a new behavior or implement a new concept, try teaching it through the lens of a real person with a real face, an approachable personality, and a life story to follow. It doesn't have to be the format of an influencer's page, but it can (and I'd argue, should) incorporate the same desirable attributes: relatability, authenticity, humor, brevity, and a story-like tone.

If anything, I learned that I severely underestimated our intrigue with influencers and was wrong about why exactly we were so obsessed. Oh, and maybe I'd stick to a better morning routine or be more of a yoga person if I spent more time on my discover page.

Don't have SnapHabit yet? You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

If you're a regular habit tracker, chances are you're looking towards building good habits to improve some aspect of your life–be it health, relationships, stress level, etc. On SnapHabit, we encourage you to use notes to document everyday details on these habits and become more accountable for them. But for habits where progress is more important than daily completion, how can you leverage notes better to track progress?

Enter Graphs 🦸‍♂️

Besides notes, SnapHabit allows you to track metrics and auto-generate graphs for every habit to see how you've been performing. All you have to do is start your notes with a number and head over to the Graphs tab, and we'll do all the heavy-lifting for you!

Graphs allow you to concretely track progress over days and see how far you've come since you first started the habit. By simply being aware of your performance trend, you'll have far more motivation to make the tiniest of progress and "get 1 percent better every day" (James Clear, author of Atomic Habits), which accumulates to remarkable improvements over months.

Personally, I track metrics for half of my habits using graphs. I track my 3-mile running time, the maximum duration for plank hold, my body weight (once a week), and my reading progress. I use graphs for each of these habits to make sure I'm putting in at least as much effort today as the day before. And the results have been astounding. Over a span of ~35 days, for example, I've increased my plank duration from 66 to 98 seconds–a near 50% improvement–by just holding on for at least a second longer than the last time. Because the graph is auto-generated, all I have to do is log my plank duration as a note and head over to Graphs to check out my upward-climbing trend.

Create your own graph

Creating graphs is very simple and flexible!

Step 1: Create a new tracking habit. Start by creating a new habit you want to track, or pick an existing one. Some good tracking habits to try are sleep hours, reading per day, workout challenges (2-minute squat challenge?!), water intake, etc. My personal favorite, and one that is super-easy to start with, is logging weight once a week.

Log Weight every Sunday–a simple graph tracking habit you can try

Step 2: Start your notes with a number. To generate a graph for your habit, just start your notes with a number. Make sure that the first note you track also includes a unit. With weight-logging, for e.g., you'd want to document "160 lbs" as your first note. You can always add any other information to your future notes (for those of you who like to justify those cheat days you took 😉). If you already have a habit you want to track, you don't need to update past notes for graphs to work–just start adding numbers from today!

  

Start your notes with a number to auto-generate graphs. Make sure the first note also has a unit

Step 2.1: Skip logging anytime you want. If you want to exclude a note from the graph, just don't start it with a number! Optionally, you can also prepend the note with a dash and a space: "- " (this comes in handy if you do have a data point that you want to note down but exclude from the graph). The graph also stays robust if you skip note-taking altogether.

You can add notes without having to log them on the graph!

Step 3: Check out your graph! Once you've put in a few data points, you can head over to the Graphs tab to check out your fancy new graph and see how you've been doing over the days. Here's a simple graph for a once-a-week "Log weight" habit:

Head over to Graphs after adding a few data points!

Add multiple graphs!

SnapHabit also lets you add multiple graphs for a habit! The combination of text and multiple graphs allows you to be creative and track all sorts of metrics for a habit. If you're an avid runner, for example, you could create graphs for average running speed, miles ran on a day, time taken for a certain mileage, or even calories burnt! Just add multiple lines to your notes, starting each line with the metric you want to track. If I wanted to extend my weight-logging habit to track my body fat percentage as well, I would start putting in notes like the one below and scroll down on the Graphs tab to see my second graph:

   

Add multiple lines to each note to create multiple graphs. Make sure to start each line with a number

This may seem time-intensive at first, but remember that you don't necessarily have to track all metrics every time (although some studies say it's best if you do!). Anytime you want, you can easily skip logging a metric by adding an empty line or writing other text instead.

Hopefully, we've piqued your interest enough to make you want to start a new graph-tracking habit! If you'd like to see more information and examples on how to create a graph, just head over to the Graphs tab for any habit and check out the instructions. And if you're already tracking a habit using graphs, we'd love to hear your feedback at info@snaphabit.app.

Don't have SnapHabit yet? You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

Image title credits: Continuous Improvement, James Clear

When you update a habit on SnapHabit, your friends get a silent notification about your update.¹ Our hypothesis around this feature was that everyone has a few supportive family members and friends who want to hear daily updates about their life.

While hopefully encouraging friends to motivate each other, we quickly got feedback that these notifications could be overwhelming for some. In this post, we walk through the framework we used to redesigned our notifications settings to give users more control.

1. User Feedback
2. Data analysis
3. Inspiration from other apps: don't assume others know what they are doing!

First, some quick context

SnapHabit aims to be the best place to share your habits with friends and family, giving you the tools like chat, group habits, and status updates to hold each other accountable in meeting your goals.

SnapHabit has a simple sharing model: share a habit with your friend and they can see your habit and get notifications whenever you check in (and previously, when you didn't).

We had an opt out setting per friend, but it was 3 navigation screens deep.

1. User Feedback

All product decisions need to be based on your users. Listen to your users!

Sometimes, this is harder than you'd think. Emails to 20 users + the promise of $20 Amazon Gift Cards = 4 responses!

... some people loved the notifications:

"It's a forcing function to stay in touch with my brother"

...other people liked them at first but then reached notification blindness.

I liked them for the first week, now I don't read them anymore.

Other people only wanted updates for habits they were participating in. Some users were already throttling notifications but had even more specific requests like only wanting notifications with specific content.

2. Data Analysis

As valuable as user feedback is, sometimes what people say doesn't always align with how they behave, so it's important to dive into actual usage.

There are 450 "friend connections" on SnapHabit.  77% (347 users) have notifications updates set to "All" and  23% opted out of notifications.

...is a 23% opt-out rate a lot, or a little?

Opting out requires work—opening the app and navigating to find the setting. So while most users still have notifications on, I see 23% and think we have room to improve.

3. Inspiration from other apps

The user feedback and data analysis matched our intuition: we should provide additional notification controls. Control settings are a tough balance: how do you provide a simple interface that's flexible enough to meet a variety of user preferences?

What other apps have similar “ambient” notifications?

HouseParty

HouseParty sends you a notification whenever a friend opens the app. Given the "ambient" nature of the product, these notifications are crucial to their success.

Notifications are such a critical part of the HouseParty experience that their team must have perfected the settings screen.  Why not just copy them?  But after some analysis...

... by May 1, they had a new design.

Lesson: Take inspiration from other apps, but don't blindly copy what their designs. They don't necessarily know what they are doing either 😜.

SnapChat

SnapChat similarly is heavily reliant on notifications, famously notifying users before they even finished their messages...

Decision

Based on inspiration from other apps, user feedback, and data analysis, we made the following changes to the app:

1. Create a global notification settings page, where users can quickly choose settings for each friend.
2. Add a "third" notification state: Highlights. In addition to "Never" and "Always", users can opt to receive only habit updates with content or occasional updates.

This was just a V1 change–and we'll run the metrics again in a few weeks.  Thanks for reading!

Don't have SnapHabit yet? You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

¹ We have a four-hour default backoff (notified a maximum of once every four hours)

I'm Randa and I hate flossing. I always feel a looming sense of dread leading up to my biannual dentist appointments. I visualize myself sitting in the dentist chair, wearing the green paper bib and feeling the cold metal chain against my neck.

"Have you been flossing?"

When I was a kid, I would foolishly lie. As an adult, I know better, and for the record I think it's cruel that dental hygienists ask this question to which they fully know the answer, just to shame us into action. I'll get back to shame later.

This twice yearly event creates so much anticipatory anxiety in my life. I could quell that anxiety (as well as prevent additional cavities) by simply adopting a flossing habit. Why hadn't I? Because who likes bleeding from their mouth?

Q: You are on a 21 day flossing streak. What changed?  Do you have any tips for aspiring flossers?

I've tried habit apps before. I've tried flossing one tooth. I've tried flossing at work when I wanted to take a break. I've tried floss that tastes good. None of this worked.

What worked was a combination of insight from the "Tiny Habits" philosophy plus the role of encouragement from my friends. Not to mention the shame I would feel if I failed. I don't care what a dental hygienist thinks of me really, but I do care if my friends think I don't accomplish my goals.

The nitty gritty:

1. I made a habit to floss every day. I flossed sometimes, but inconsistently.
2. I updated my habit to only require myself to floss on Mondays and I told my friends. I'm most motivated at the beginning of the week, so I figured that might work.
3. I flossed on Monday. And then again on Tuesday. And Wednesday just because. When I reduced the perceived effort to achieve my goal, I procrastinated less and developed a consistent habit.

Don't require too much of yourself at first. If you can floss one day a week and feel good about it, start with that.

Q: In our recent email exchange, you wrote that you have become more self forgiving.  What motivated this change?

I've been telling everyone I know to read this book called Self-Compassion. Most SnapHabit users are probably high achievers who want to improve themselves. I love self-improvement. However, sometimes I mistake my desire to improve for an excuse to be unkind to myself.

As it turns out, self-criticism isn't very useful for self-improvement. When you criticize yourself, it's easy to get caught up in those negative self beliefs which in turn make it hard to move forward. Another relevant read is Mindset by Carol Dweck. Now, as much as I can help it, if I come across something challenging or make a mistake, I give myself a proverbial hug and tell myself it's ok. And then I usually overcome the challenge in less time than I would have had I dwelled in self-criticism.

Q: Why do you use SnapHabit (other than because you know the people building it)?

I use SnapHabit because it makes it socially acceptable for me to text my friends about flossing. In truth, I think it's both important and useful to involve my friends in achieving my goals. I want them to know what I'm working towards so that they can support me, and I like to do the same for them.

Q: Where can people learn more about you?

1. Check out my SnapHabit profile #comingsoon
2. Connect with me on LinkedIn
3. Watch this rap video I made 6 years ago to get an internship (which is how I met Jake!)

Download SnapHabit on iOS here and Android here.

When we thought about helping drive behavior change, our hypothesis was that friends encouraging each other would be more effective and fun than automated reminders. For example, here are daily notifications from a habit app I used in the past:

I didn't find that useful... So... instead of sending automated reminder notifications, we decided to send notifications on two occasions:

1. "update notification" when your friend update their habits, we let you know
2. "coaching notification" when your friend hasn't updated their habits in 3 days, you get a reminder to encourage them.  Here's a "coaching notification":

The "coaching" notification has received some positive feedback from users... but the numbers don't lie.

• We sent ~50 coaching notifications yesterday
• 0 chat messages and habit updates were sent in the 20 minutes after we sent the notifications.

Getting notifications right is very hard. I helped design many as a notifications product manager for Google Maps.  but 0/50 is not where you want to start. Was our hypothesis wrong? Do people not want to encourage others? Or is it something else...

Wrong tools. Messaging someone to ask them why they didn't do something is awkward.

Wrong people. The right accountability buddies are not using the app with one other.

So starting tomorrow, we're sunsetting the notification, and going to try other outlets for accountability, like:

• Make it more fun: Challenges (Shared Habits) — launched V1!
• Make it easier: Connect habits & chat, more visualizations to understand overall success

We're trying to build something light, useful and fun — and your feedback helps us get there. Thanks for the feedback, please keep sending it our way. You can download the app on iOS here and Android here.

Today, my dad arrived in New York aboard the USNS Comfort. As a member of the Navy & Navy Reserve for over 30 years, he was called up to join a Navy-led effort to boost hospital capacity in NYC. In his 60s and on a confined ship, I am concerned and worried for my dad given COVID-19. He's sharing a cabin with five others. When I asked if he could push back on the order given his age, he was not interested: "This is what being a doctor is about. If I can help, I will help."

Watching him get called up and serve has given me a new level of gratitude and appreciation for those in the medical field. My dad had always encouraged me to pursue medical school, which meant there was no way I would follow his path! I discounted the real purpose that drives so many of our medical providers every day. Now, I look at so many of my friends who are healthcare providers, and I just want to express my gratitude and love.

It’s been amazing to see so many come together and contribute in their own way. We’ve certainly been reminded how codependent we are in this world (can we remove the phrase “unskilled labor” from our collective vocabulary?!). And to my dad and all in the medical field, I want to send an extra bit of love today.

This made me think about how I could do something to help so far from the front lines.

My dad & me

I've always loved the concept of habits and the value in tracking them. I built an automated habit tracking app years ago.  It was weird. It tracked everything I did, and then mapped it to a 24 hour clock.

Over the years, I've tried to support my dad in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We're rarely in the same place: I've spent most of the past three years 10,000 miles away from my dad (St. Louis to Tokyo).

Each time I would return home, he would express frustration over not meeting the goals he set since my last visit.  So a few months ago, I started a Slack group called "Dad Habits" for us to update eachother on some of our goals.

After a few weeks of technical challenges, Slack started working. More than anything, it became a reason for my dad and I to stay in touch: the shared goals were an extra forcing function to check in more often.

As much as Slack worked, it was too complex. My dad never really got the hang of the Channels 😂. So a friend and I built an app for my dad and I to use.  It was a simple app: it just tracks whether or not you completed something and lets your friends know.  But it has worked wonders for me and my dad, and a few friends we shared it with. Even now, when my dad is sharing a small cabin with five others aboard the USNS Comfort, we're still using the app as a tool to support each other to complete our goals ("Aerobic to break a sweat" is one of his — though he's 1/3 completing that on the ship thus far!).

Given the value I've found from it, Albert and I decided to release the app for free to hopefully help people stay motivated & socially connected during this time of social distancing, as I plan to with my dad. You can download it on iOS here and Android here.