1. DAILY RESOLUTION
Calming habits…one small step at a time

3. Resolutions are hard to keep
% Dropped After 1 Week
25%

4. Resolutions are hard to keep
% Dropped After 2 Weeks
29%

5. Resolutions are hard to keep
% Dropped After 1 Month
36%

6. Resolutions are hard to keep
% Dropped After 6 Month
54%

8. Goal
Motivate people to exercise regularly…using
only SMS
Results
100% retention after 2 weeks
20-30% increase in exercise frequency
200+ self-reported exercise sessions

9. Secret Ingredient #1:
Escalation of Commitments

10. Secret Ingredient #2:
Social Pressure

11. My Method frontend + backend
Daily SMS
Social Statistics
Positive Reinforcements

12. My Guinea Pigs
20 Days across 2 trials

13. Results: surprises
People love to share or brag!
> 50% of replies contained more than Yes/No
People exercised even when they said “No”.
Motivated by having to report later
People are competitive!
70% proactively asked about how they stack up

14. Results: expected
People exercised more, a lot more.
20-30% increase in activity level
Social pressure really works.
4% broken promises vs. 8% without social elements
We all love compliments.
“Yay, Thank you! You just made my day.”

15. People loved the pilot.
Exercising became enjoyable.
Everyone wants to keep going!

16. Mission Accomplished?

17. What’s next?
Bigger pivots?
Beyond SMS?
Beyond exercise?

18. QUESTIONS?
Calming habits…one small step at a time

19. Expert Methodology – Applying Escalation
of Commitments to Behavior Design
• Premise – People are more likely to follow through on things if
they made prior commitment or promises to do so. This is
especially true for public declarations or promises made to
others.
• Application – By incorporating elements of pre-commitment
into behavior design, one can raise the motivation level for
subjects to perform the desired behaviors.
• Example – ‘Daily Resolution’ Calming Technology Project
http://slidesha.re/dailyresolution
Yi Yin – MBA/MS Stanford University, YiYin@Stanford.edu