Motion, the top gamified steps & fitness app in the uk just launched a free online fair step challenge builder. Everyone want a step challenge, but everyone fails by trying one-size-fits-all goals, that make it too easy for the athletes and impossible for the people who are actually wanting to improve. Motion's step challenge builder helps you build fair step challenges where everyone's gets a custom goal based on their actual level / ability.
So, we don't do any of the typical "stick" options. Your pet won't get sick, it won't die, it won't regress in levels. Within a week, it gets a little sad if you're behind on your goal, but there are no longer term effects of this. If you miss a week, your pet just hangs around and when you come back, it'll start progressing again.
If you're sick / on holiday / life gets in the way for a while, our adaptive goals kick in, and lower the difficulty. So when you do come back, your goals and challenges are at a nice achievable level, so you get a nice pump of progress straight away. The idea is that returning should feel good, not guilty.
We're also heavily against streaks, daily or otherwise. We promote rest, and integration of fitness into everyday life, so we actively encourage days when you don't hit your target. And, we think the whole "streak" rhetoric has demonstrably failed, it causes more emotional stress than any gain it provides.
A few years ago I bought my mum a Fitbit. She quit in ~four days, not because she's lazy, but because it told her she needed 10,000 steps a day when she was doing 1,500. That number isn't a goal, it's a wall. (The 10k figure originated from a 1960s Japanese pedometer marketing campaign, it has nothing to do with your actual baseline or life.)
I watched her play Farmville (and candy crush) for 45 minutes straight each day that same week and had a lightbulb moment. She wasn't unmotivated, she just needed the right feedback loop. So I built her a simple app: personalised goals based on her actual activity, gradual weekly progression, a social layer so she could do challenges with friends, and a virtual pet that grows healthier as she does.
She stuck with it. Her friends wanted it. Then their friends did too.
That's Motion. 50,000+ users across 73 countries later, it's still a side project — I work full time and build this on the side. No streaks that punish you for missing a day, no arbitrary targets. Just a goal that makes sense for you, and people to do it with. Happy to answer anything.
OOh! this is the first genuinely interesting thing I've seen on HN for days! I find the biggest issue is when you have multiple 4k monitors, you take a screenshot, and obviously it pops up 3 screens east of my current pointer position, and I just can't get over there quick enough!
This is actually a super interesting study, and I'm super keen to see what else comes out of this going forward.
I think my biggest push-back would be that while this is an interesting initial signal, there's no real demonstration of any causal connection. Is the semaglutide actually effecting brain chemistry, or do people just feel better when they loose weight, get healthier, and improve their blood-sugar levels?
The bigger question maybe is, does it matter? If semaglutide -> weight loss -> improved symptoms of depression, then maybe the argument is as good as promoting exercise and health in general as a help for depression (which is already well-established).
Super curious to hear if you plan to integrate other platforms into this too. I definitely suffer from the problem I think you are trying to solve, but find the bigger issue is with platform fragmentation. Sometimes it's a chat with my cofounder in slack, sometimes it's chat in the pub (not sure how you could encompass this one??), sometimes it's a quick WhatsApp discussion because one of us is away from our laptop, or maybe even a chat on Discord with some users involved. Something that could connect and coalesce fragmented decisions and discussions across platforms could be a game changer?