✅ 16. Display a visible progression path
Design a clear and visible roadmap, helping users visualize their journey and motivating them to reach the next stage.
(ex. Duolingo displays a language learning path with clear milestones that users aim to reach, giving them a sense of accomplishment and clarity about what’s next.)
✅ 17. Offer tiered milestones and celebrate them
Implement tiered milestones that provide increasingly valuable rewards or recognition as users advance. Celebrate key milestones in a user’s journey, providing positive reinforcement when users reach significant achievements.
(ex. Ladder rewards users with tiered milestones, like completing workouts, and badges that build a personal wall of achievements. This visual display of progress, combined with celebratory messages, keeps users motivated.)
✅ 18. Incorporate dynamic difficulty ramping
Gradually increase the difficulty of tasks or challenges as users progress. This keeps users in a state of flow where tasks feel achievable but challenging enough to remain interesting.
(ex. Headspace gradually introduces more advanced meditation techniques and longer session durations as users become more comfortable with the basics.)
Many of the strategies shared here leverage psychological behaviors that are often outside users’ conscious control, making certain products highly addictive. While some of these engagement loops lead to positive outcomes (such as learning a new skill or improving fitness), others can have negative consequences, leading to compulsive, unproductive, or harmful behaviors like Doomscrolling. This places a significant ethical responsibility on design teams to ensure they use these tactics responsibly, balancing engagement with the well-being of their users.
✅ 19. Avoid doom-scrolling and limit variable reward abuse
Limit infinite scrolling and avoid overusing variable rewards like unpredictable likes or comments. These design patterns often used to increase engagement, can lead to compulsive behavior by constantly serving new content. Incorporate features that encourage users to take breaks
(ex. Instagram helps prevent doom-scrolling by incorporating the “You’re All Caught Up” feature, which notifies users when they’ve seen all recent posts from the accounts they follow.)
✅ 20. Mitigate social validation traps
To avoid fostering unhealthy competition and social comparison, platforms should reduce the emphasis on likes, shares, and comments as primary indicators of success. By designing experiences that prioritize meaningful engagement over quantitative metrics, platforms can encourage healthier interactions
(ex. BeReal limits social comparison by only allowing users to post once per day within a two-minute window. )
✅ 21. Provide transparency and algorithm control
Be transparent about algorithms and recommendation systems while also providing clear insights into time spent on the platform. This allows users to manage their content and engagement more mindfully, promoting healthier interactions.
(ex. YouTube lets users see why certain videos are recommended and adjust their preferences. They can disable specific recommendations, clear watch history, and use “Time Watched” insights to monitor daily and weekly usage, promoting healthier viewing habits.)
