We're developing a number of banking products to help our users save more money. More importantly, we'd like our users to develop money-saving habits. I'm pretty aware that lots of people have made pretty big lifestyle changes with the help of an app. People can be motivated to get out of the house to get in shape or to drive cars. According to this article about changing user behavior, three elements have to be present at the same time: motivation, ability and triggers. Take an uber driver as an example:
- Motivation - "I want to make some extra money"
- Ability - "I have a car"
- Triggers - Uber sends out notifications of events in the area, surge pricing maps, and driver rewards (gas card, insurance discounts, phone plans), and achievement badges.
I've also looked into some ways that fitness apps cause behavioral change in health (I've looked at more, but I can only post two links).
My question is this: There are countless ways to inspire a user to do something. How do we get users to not do something? How do we get users to not spend money?
The idea I'm toying with is to have a badge/achievement system that rewards frugal behaviors like using coupons, not eating out, comparing them to how they were a month earlier, and other methods that don't rely on a dollar amount in a savings account.