Habit-Building Checklist

🛣 Checklist: 6 tips for building products that promote good

habits
Tips for designing a product that people love, by promoting positive transformation in their lives:

Tactics Why / How

Identify the Positive Positive habit triggers are the emotional or psychological cues that
Trigger prompt people to engage in their desired habit.

To design a product that promotes such habit-building, first, identify

the possible emotional or psychological cues that prompts people to
seek out a good habit.

Try putting yourself in their shoes: Observe yourself during the day
and notice your emotions, thoughts, and environmental cues that
could initiate your desired behavior.

Actionable Design small, achievable actions within your product that contribute
Micro-Wins to the positive habit.

Celebrate these micro-wins to keep people motivated.

For example: Apple iBooks gives you a notification when you pass
your reading goal for the day (the default is only 5 minutes!)

Reward Progress, Acknowledge progress towards habit goals with variable rewards.
Not Just
Completion Think badges, streaks, or milestone celebrations, but avoid relying
solely on features that encourage endless loops (like excessive
notifications, which reduce the psychological impact of each
reward).

Focus on Mastery Structure the product to create a sense of accomplishment as people

develop the habit. The STRONG (weightlifting tracking) app highlights
personal bests and percentage increases of volume each week as you

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 log your workouts.

Encourage Empower people to personalize their experience and set their own
Autonomy goals (thus leveraging the Endowment Effect).

The product should be a tool that supports their self-directed

habit-building journey.

Promote Social An additional support for people's habit-building journey comes from
Support the power of social connection.

Integrate features that allow people to connect with friends or build an

accountability group within your product — This can involve progress
sharing, encouraging messages, or even simply showing your friend’s
activity to encourage friendly competition.

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🧠 5 Psychology + UX Insights

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💡 The Redesign
If you're looking for inspiration

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💡 Want to use psychology to build better products?
If you're looking for more ways to sharpen your product skills using psychology, check these out:

Product Psychology Course.

If you want to learn how to use psychology to create better
experiences for your customers, check out our course:
https://growth.design/course

Cognitive Biases Cheatsheet.

100+ cognitive biases and design principles that affect
your product experiences. Tons of product examples, tips,
and checklists to improve your user experience:
https://growth.design/psychology
—Dan Benoni & Louis-Xavier Lavallée

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