Give Me a Vacation Mode From Streaks

I use a lot of apps that are gamified to encouraged “streaks”. I feel neutral to somewhat annoyed about streaks as a tool—I’m know there’s some human psychology research behind it, but the motivation behind it is really to get people to use the app more. Nonetheless, I’m also susceptible to them, which often means faking doing something to keep my streak alive, because very few of these apps allow for the flexibility of being a person.

Take, for example, Fabulous. I had an extremely long streak for one of my routines in early 2020 and it was motivating me and helping me develop morning habits I really benefitted from. Then I went on vacation for a long weekend in England, used my phone a lot less, and lost my entire streak. Sure, I could have been better at remembering to just check off tasks to keep it alive, but that’s a dumb way to build good habits. I was doing a good thing—spending time offline with family—and I felt punished for it. It completely disincentivized me from using the app, which is the downside of streaks being motivational: they can also be demotivational, especially if it feels unfair.

Many apps that focus on this kind of gamifying have added some customizability and you can usually adjust what days you’re expected to do things, but that’s about it. I’ve yet to encounter one that offers a (free) option to go on vacation or be sick or otherwise not be able to go through the normal motions for a day or two without being penalized. I’m sure the app makers would hand-wring about people using it to beat the system but, honestly, who cares? It is, at the very least, worth testing.

One streak app I use that does this very well is the New York Times crossword puzzle app. Because the puzzle gets progressively harder as the week goes on (Saturday is the hardest day), many people only do Mondays or until Wednesday or whatever. It used to work like every other streak app, with only people who completed every single puzzle getting one. But then they realized that rather than make every person who just likes the Tuesday puzzle feel bad because they never get a streak, they could give you a streak of Tuesdays or Thursdays or whatever. It shows a great understanding of how users engage with your app and what they get out of it.

There’s a fine needle to thread between actions that help your business and actions that help your users, but it feels like offering understanding to users would improve the gamification experience.