Strava & the power of moments
When your battery dies down on your fitness tracker, what do you do?
- Do you continue with your fitness routine?
- Do you continue with other activities?
This is a fitness paradox that a lot of people encounter on a day to day basis. Fitness trackers are so ubiquitous that it has become synonymous with fitness and has prompted a new breed of fitness enthusiasts. Its value proposition was simple — providing visibility of tracking mundane activities, leading to habit formation. There are companies that have been built on this premise and have stretched the envelope further. Strava is one such company.
“If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen”
Strava came to life in 2009 by enabling tracking of cycling and running activities in a social network environment. We all are aware that motivation is the catalyst that defines the efficacy of activity turning into a habit. It provided a way for friends/peers to be competitive and encourage each other on a day-to-day basis.
The biggest hurdle in retaining the user is to maintain the motivation levels on an ongoing basis. Strava’s ecosystem of motivation leverages, both the intrinsic and extrinsic experience to continuously stimulate user behaviour and promote ongoing engagement with the app.
Intrinsic motivation is the act of doing something without any external rewards internally rewarding whereas extrinsic motivation is the act of doing something because it leads to an external reward.
Let’s take the case of a runner and a cyclist to understand how motivation plays out.
A runner who feels lousy (subjective assessment) might go for a run and discover they actually beat their best score (objective assessment). While a cyclist in a great mood (subjective assessment) might find they dropped on the leaderboard due to low-performance metrics (objective assessment).
There is an interesting interplay of objective and subjective assessment. It is a well-established fact that attention to accomplishments increases motivation among uncommitted and inexperienced individuals. According to a research paper titled Motivation Resulting from Completed and Missing Actions, the authors propose that the attention to lack of accomplishments increases motivation among committed and experienced individuals by increasing their perceived need to make progress on a goal.
Power of moments
One of the features that intrigued me the most is called ‘memories’ — a journal of active life. It created a hard-to-break habit of documenting the action. As the quip goes: “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen.”
‘Memories’ feature is built on the micro-moment philosophy. Each of the micro-moment has the potential to define a memorable or a forgettable experience — jolt us, elevate us or change us.
If you think about the process by which we assess our experiences, you will realise that we don’t really remember things minute-by-minute. Instead, all that we remember are the peaks, the downs and the transitions. This is the power of moments.
In an increasingly crowded and commoditised market, brands can only differentiate themselves on the basis of user experience. If you see the history of successful brands and products, very often you will find the incumbents’ weakness often becomes the challenger brands’ USP.
What’s your take on this?
Until next time!
~ Sajid
(Sajid is the founder at Le Monturé Strategy, a boutique strategy consulting and advisory firm that works at the intersection of behaviour, business and innovation)
