Some context about Hood

Hood is a new-age Anonymous social network that allows users to share their

true stories without the fear of being judged.

How did it start?

Before this project, we had already launched a badge system with user scores as an initial step towards gamification. However, it was on a relatively small scale. Users' desire to earn badges grew over time, and it served as a form of social recognition, differentiating them within the app. We believe that by introducing a streak feature, we are taking a significant step forward in implementing gamification. This feature provides users with a sense of reward and recognition for their daily contributions to the app, which we anticipate will enhance user retention and engagement.

Total badge holders: 429 (as of September 12, 2024)

To earn a creator badge on HOOD, the quality of content and engagement (likes and comments) are crucial for determining the user score. When a user's score reaches a certain threshold, we review their profile and contributions before awarding the badge. We currently have over 400+ badge holders among the millions of users we have acquired. This approach helps maintain the badge's value and ensures that only the best creators are celebrated.

These 400+ badge holders (I am also one of them 😉) account for 45% of the total daily engagement activities, and the results support our decision to limit the badge's distribution.

Streak Mechanism

• A streak is established when a user logs in and performs a key action on a given day. (Key Action: Post Created)

• Users can monitor their streak progress on their profile, including the current streak progress and milestones achieved. This section displays both the Current Streak and All-Time Best Streak counts.

• Users earn 100 score bonus for each day they maintain their streak. Additionally, bonus points are awarded at the following milestones:

  • For 7 Day Streak = 2.5k Score Bonus

  • For 15 Day Streak = 10K Score Bonus

  • For 30 Day Streak = 30k Score Bonus

  • For 60 Day Streak = 100k Score Bonus

  • For 100 Day Streak = 250k Score Bonus

  • For 150 Day Streak = 500k Score Bonus

  • For 200 Day Streak = 1 Million Score Bonus

  • For 300 Day Streak = 2.5 Million Score Bonus

  • And so on...

Deleting a post does not affect the streak.

Users can view the streaks of other users on their profiles. (I was against it, but I lost the debate. However, I am ready to debate again if needed 💯)

Streak Revive option

When we introduced the streak feature, the response was great, but many users couldn't keep up with it. So, we thought, why not introduce the streak revive option? This also allows us to boost our monetization.

Initially, when we introduced the streak revive option, we offered it for free to boost user morale. Users could revive their all-time streak for free, but it is a one-time option.

Once users have used their free revive streak option, they need to use one credit (which costs 18 INR) to revive their streak, and this must be done within 24 hours.

Notification Alerts

We need to manage the notification alerts. For now, we have decided to use only three types of notification alerts. If the need arises, we can add more later; otherwise, we don’t want to overcomplicate it.

Congratulatory Notification: When a user completes their daily streak.

Reminder Notification: When a user is about to lose their streak.

Milestone Congratulatory Notification: When a user achieves milestones such as Day 7, Day 14, or Day 30 streaks.

Every day, a user receives a reminder notification to maintain their streak. The reminder notification redirects users to the Post Creation area.

I decided not to be overly creative or fancy here and instead use the existing notification icons, similar to Snapchat. It is easy to remember, and users are familiar with it.

Leaderboard Framework

We already use leaderboards on the Search screen to highlight the top creators each week and month, and they’ve been successful in motivating users. Not including a leaderboard in the streak feature would be a mistake. It would foster competition and provide users with real-time feedback, which can help keep them engaged.

Players would see their own real-time rankings and scores alongside those of top competitors. The leaderboard would serve as a form of extrinsic motivation—rewards that come from external sources, such as money, grades, or praise. Players would experience this motivation by comparing themselves with others.

We decided that the leaderboard would show the top 30 streak holders and the current streak rank of the user. The ranks will be updated every 24 hours.

Badges

We decided to award badges to users at every milestone, which they can display on their profile pictures to stand out. Designing the badges was challenging due to the 3-day sprint, especially since I was handling all the design work as a solo designer. I began gathering references for my mood board from Dribbble, Mobbin, Behance, and other applications.

These references helped capture the essence and inspiration needed for a visually appealing mood board, ensuring it aligned with our design goals.

Below are the mood board references for designing the badges.

So here is the outcome of the badges I designed.

So here’s the Final Outcome

We monitored the streak feature for the next 14 days, and here are the results: Post creation usage increased by 30%, and comment creation increased by 35%. We also observed an improvement in retention: D1 retention increased from 21% to 25%, and D7 retention increased from 7.5% to 9.89%.

Additionally, before releasing the streak feature, the percentage of users who posted on D1 and returned to post on D2 was only 25%. After releasing the streak feature, this number increased to 62%.

Here is the adoption rate: 32% adoption among old users and 23% adoption among new users, with 66% of the old users continuing their streak and 51% of the new users continuing their streak.

"Feature adoption rate needs to be higher than 20%, and the retention of the feature should be more than 40% to determine if any feature is successful."

Source

Conclusion

The Streak was introduced in the 3rd week of August and it has still not reached its full potential. We are also packing a few add-on features for the Streak which will be shipped soon. I will try to update the latest results (but don't trust I might forget too).

This is not the end, it's just the beginning...

Do you like what you see?

Get in touch: souravsrivastava123@gmail.com • Linkedin