We now faced the problem of keeping users engaged for the months necessary to see results from the nutritional program. No amount of prodding from push-notifications or even access to support agents could keep people who were not experiencing benefits from the nutrients and tired of feeding data into an app ad infinitum. I used my background in studying habit formation and gamefication to study ways of increasing user motivation.
I applied the Octalysis framework to this problem, identifying all the dimensions of human motivation that could be leveraged to engage users. The only dimension that was off limits as anything relating to social. Even if it were not a violation of federal law in the US and Canada to do so, it violates my own professional standards to transgress the norms of privacy.
Game-like principles provided the missing piece
In this process, we located the missing puzzle piece that tied everything together. We had yet to figure out how to use the app to deliver information on supplement formula updates that the data would enable. The answer came in the form of collectible "cards" that a user received whenever sufficient data allowed them to get some sort of science-based insight. The most prized cards would be the new nutrients which the system would recommend if it detected a deficiency. These are valuable insights that conventional medicine cannot deliver, in large part because their focus on blood tests rules out any deficiencies not detectable in such a test. The physical-like format of the cards further increased the dopamine hit that getting such a card offered to the user.