Several common health issues, including high blood pressure and obesity, stem from our contemporary lifestyles. These conditions are inevitably linked to individual behavior and habits like inactivity or chronic stress. Emerging digital products strive to confront these challenges and encourage healthy behavior changes, yet they frequently fall short in sustaining user motivation.

The primary challenge originates from a dilemma prevalent in behavioral sciences: the interests of our future self often clash with the immediate goals of our present self.

To avoid obesity-related complications years down the line, you have to forgo binge-watching your favorite show today, shop for healthy ingredients, and invest time in the kitchen. The situation is made even more difficult by the often intangible rewards: sustained energy investment (like working out at the gym) is required today, but the future benefit is the avoidance of an outcome, such as cardiovascular and mobility problems. We are more inclined to strive for positive outcomes rather than evading a distant negative consequence.

As stressed in the previous chapter, managing motivation is the most challenging aspect of the habit-building loop. In reality, successful product designs rarely consider motivation as a separate element but rather as one half of the motivation/effort equation. How can we do that?

Enter gamification, that is often used to boost the level of engagement during healthy habit-building. Using gamification techniques we encourage beneficial behaviors with rewards that evoke positive emotions in the present. In plain words, the goal is to sugarcoat the continuous effort required by creating "artificial" short-term rewards, as true benefits may not manifest until much later (or potentially won’t ever be noticeable).