Colgate Connected Health
30% of Colgate's Connected Health users only brushed once a day. We needed to change behavior, not just track it.
OVERVIEW
GOAL
Incentivizes healthy brushing habits through gamification
MY ROLE
Product Designer
TASKS
UX/UI Design
Wireframing
User Research
Prototyping
Original Connected Health App
Background
The app already told users how well they brushed. It didn't give them a reason to brush more. With an average brushing frequency of 1.3 times per day across the user base, the gap wasn't awareness. Users knew twice daily was the goal. The gap was motivation.
The instinctive response would have been push notifications or reminder alerts. We knew from research that reminders without reward quickly become noise. We needed a system that made brushing feel worth doing, not just worth remembering.
Approach
We designed a micro-incentive system where every completed brushing session earned one Smile Point, equivalent to one cent and redeemable in the in-app store. The value was deliberately small. A large reward would have felt gimmicky and unsustainable. A small, consistent reward created a compounding sense of progress that reinforced the habit loop without inflating expectations.
The harder design problem was streaks. Asking users to commit to a 7-day streak on day one is a known failure pattern. The ask is too large and the first miss feels catastrophic. Instead, we introduced progressive challenges: starting with just 2 days of twice-daily brushing, rewarding completion, then introducing a slightly longer challenge. Users built streaks organically rather than being assigned one. This was the key behavioral design decision that separated our approach from a standard loyalty program.
Asking users to immediately begin a brushing streak would have been too much of an ask to start with. So in order to slowly onboard a user into a brushing streak we developed challenges that would popup. In the beginning the challenge would be very small, only asking users to complete 2 days of brushing twice per day. Upon successfully meeting this initial milestone, we reward them with 50 Smile Points. Simultaneously, we'd introduce a slightly longer challenge, gradually guiding users into a more extended streak duration. This gradual progression was designed to facilitate users in organically building their brushing streak over time, rather than demanding an immediate and potentially overwhelming commitment. The goal was to empower users to embark on their habit-building journey at a pace that feels both manageable and sustainable.
Impact
Brushing Frequency
1.8x Per day
Streaks
2309 New brushing streaks started
In-App Spending
$43,789 spent in-app