Designing streaks for long-term user growth

Streaks can be powerful engines for engagement and behavior change but also have drawbacks. In this post, we go beyond the most common drawback, the demotivating effect of breaking a streak, to highlight the tendency of streaks to become less useful over time. We discuss actionable product tweaks that can be made to address this shortcoming and unlock long-term behavior change

As product teams search for ways to consistently engage their users, a common tactic is gamification. Streaks are a fundamental tenet of gamification. Generally speaking, a streak is whenever a user records an activity for a consecutive number of times. For example, if a user uses an app to work out every day from Monday to Friday, they now have a 5-day streak.

A definition of streaks - To be on a streak is to do an action repeatedly with consistency 

While streaks are quite commonly used in smartphone apps, they are not a modern creation. The basic idea of streaks is fundamental to our psychology and motivation. This is what makes them so useful. 

Think of the last time you set a new goal. It may have been about losing weight, getting better at writing, learning an instrument, or getting fit. Initiating a new goal can be challenging because it's not always clear how to set realistic intermediate goals to get to that bigger goal. 

Streaks solve this problem by creating immediate and measurable benchmarks. For example, instead of the vague goal of "mastering the guitar," you might commit to practicing for 15-30 minutes daily. This approach of building a streak:

By turning long-term goals into concrete daily actions, streaks make the path to success more manageable. This consistency is a surefire way to create behavior change because it often involves restructuring one’s environment and context. For someone to play an instrument for 15-30 minutes every day, they need to carve out a dedicated time and place to do so, pulling the person into the behavior even when they might not feel like it, or might have forgotten.

Research supports the importance of building streaks. A study of 60,000 gym members found that consecutive attendance days (e.g. Monday and Tuesday) predicted long-term gym habits better than non-consecutive days (e.g. Monday and Thursday). Similar results are seen across other behavior change domains, ranging from meditation, diet, sleep, productivity, and language learning. 

The utility of streaks is not lost on app creators. Our analysis revealed that 7 out of the top 10 fitness apps use a streaks feature in their design. The utility of streaks is so great that they can stand as the core feature of an app, with examples like ‘Streaks’, ‘Tally’, and ‘Gentler Streak’. 

But app creators are not including streaks solely because users benefit from them—streaks are useful for app metrics as well. What better way to boost engagement than by encouraging daily actions that draw users back to your app day after day? In this sense, streaks can be a win-win: users can track their progress while the app maintains its daily active users (DAU). 

Which of the Top 10 Apps Use Streaks?- Our analysis revealed that 7 out of the top 10 apps in the App Store use streaks in their design.

Streaks appear simple in concept and are easy to implement. Given their promise to boost user engagement, it's no surprise that streaks are becoming a common feature in many apps. However, their simplicity can also be a drawback, requiring product teams to take a careful and strategic approach to their implementation. We discuss this next.

While streaks do well for igniting the behavioral change journey, over time they fall short in two ways: abandonment and misalignment.

Streaks often fail due to complete abandonment. Initially, they are highly motivating as the number of consecutive days grows and the user's enthusiasm builds. However, expecting to maintain daily consistency forever is unrealistic. It's normal and healthy to take breaks. Striving for absolute consistency can result in burnout and ultimately lead to giving up on the streak altogether.

When a streak inevitably breaks, the user's motivation, which at that point is directly tied to the streak, can plummet. This loss of momentum is like water spilling through a crack in a dam. Restarting a streak means starting with the first drop again. While some users may try to restart their streak, life's disruptions often lead to repeated breaks. Eventually, even the most dedicated users may abandon the app entirely, as the pressure to maintain the streak becomes overwhelming.

Streak abandonment- Users are unable to keep a streak forever, causing it to break. A streak of breaks may be enough to cause the user to abandon the app altogether.

Much has been written about the abandonment problem in streaks, and the app industry has devised clever, albeit questionable solutions to address it. However, there is another way streaks can fail. In this scenario, the individual does not abandon their streak but gradually derives less and less benefit from maintaining it. We focus on this issue in this article because it doesn’t immediately stand out as a failure and therefore requires extra vigilance from product teams.

While streaks do well for igniting the behavioral change journey, over time they fall short. Consistency is key to starting a habit and creating an easily achieved goal. Yet users who are on the path toward changing behavior will soon outgrow the initial utility of streaks and need measures that support their evolution. Let’s build on the example of learning the guitar. Daily practice will help beginners grow their skills, but the utility of repetition will go down over time. As one's skills improve, simply repeating the same exercises becomes less beneficial, highlighting the need for more complex challenges, like learning songs with increasing difficulty or performing in public. This underscores the ceiling effect of streaks, eventually just showing up will not be enough for growth.

The streak misalignment - The utility of streaks drops much faster for the user than for the app

This is when we arrive at a misalignment: streaks hold up much better for the companies using them than for their users. Once started, a streak can transform into a user’s goal in and of itself, becoming the sole reason that brings users back every day – even if they aren’t progressing towards their actual goal. On paper, this feels like a win for the business, and it has proven its value at companies like Duolingo by skyrocketing the number of DAUs. Yet, usage only shows a part of the picture and is not indicative of goal achievement. Such short-term metrics miss the holistic view of a customer. Most companies care not only about bringing in new users but about retaining those users over time, which can only be done by maintaining a high utility for the user. Focusing the business around streak-centric KPIs, like DAUs, will not capture and improve the lifetime value of a user. 

The central weakness of streaks is short-term effectiveness that ultimately cannibalizes long-term growth. To overcome this weakness, consider these design features:

Streaks effectively engage users and increase daily interactions, but without careful design, they can limit meaningful progress. To truly benefit both business and user needs, product teams need to balance their strategy to boost daily engagement with the user’s own long-term goals. A good streak keeps users coming back, but a great streak moves them forward.