Background
Two of the major areas that Covenant Eyes focuses on are Products and Educational Resources.
Our products are made up of tools for account management, internet activity reports and client software. Together these tools help to facilitate accountability relationships in regards to what people are doing online.
Educational Resources are manifested in e-books, blog articles and partnered research. Our resources help people understand the negative impact of pornography in our lives and equip people to do something about it.
With the 40 Day Challenge, the goal was to combine the two. We wanted to create a product that would use educational resources to help facilitate accountability while equipping individuals with a tool to help with the fight against internet temptation.
Scope
- Design Strategy
- iOS App Design
- User Interface Design
- Interaction Design
- Content Strategy
- Behavior Change Design
Extensions
- Android App
- Bible App Reading Plan
Awards & Mentions
- Josh McDowell
Approach
Psychology of Behavior Modification
In psychology, there is a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. This means that someone can be driven to do something either by external factors, like the prospect of receiving a reward, such as money, or by internal factors, like the enjoyment derived from doing an activity.
Covenant Eyes users are typically intrinsically motivated. Most of what motivates them for change is inward; defeating sin, reconciling with spouse, cleansing their mind, protecting their kids, etc. These are all inward. Rewards, compensation and similar things aim to address extrinsically motivated people, not intrinsic. So anything rooted in reward-based thinking would most likely fail. So how can something like achievements be aimed at triggering the intrinsic user? That’s what I had to start thinking about. By knowing this, I am able to tweak the achievements (later called discoveries) to address the right motivations. The discovery/achievement should speak to the inward motivation instead of a reward.
Two Pronged Approach
So again, a discovery should speak to the user’s inward motivations. In designing this, I wanted to encourage users to continue progressing through the challenge. Discoveries should use imagery for association and recognition while summarizing the info the user learned that day.
But discoveries still have a tendency to lean towards an extrinsic motivation in a way. By nature, they are a reward you get after you’ve completed something. For this reason, I designed a notification system that would remind people periodically about the challenge. But there were other factors to consider when creating notifications. Frequency, tone of message, length of message, timing, trigger and opt-out options all had to be carefully architected for our persona within their context.
Outcome
User interface
For the UI, I wanted it to be simple and almost invisible. I tried to use as little as possible while ensuring there was plenty of negative space to let each component breathe. I intentionally used subtle shadows and gradients to show depth because flat-design has gone too far. Each icon was meticulously crafted by myself or some other guy that I purchased some of the icons from. 😀 Yeah, yeah, I didn’t design all of them. But no icon was arbitrarily chosen. Through the imagery, I wanted to communicate meaning and understanding.
Interaction Design
Each day is a challenge and as such contains several parts. There is an intro to the day, an action step (usually a video or article), a reflection question and then a self-assessment. It was crucial to minimize distractions and create a sense of accomplishment by finishing each part. When going through a day, the only option is to interact and move forward. Navigational elements and such were removed in order to encourage forward progress. Essentially, each day contains within itself a 6-step process. Ancillary actions exist as well like settings, passcode, and share options. But the interaction design and UI have to work to emphasize the primary actions while still allowing secondary actions.
“The 40 Day Challenge brings together the best advice Covenant Eyes has ever published on how to break free from the seemingly endless cycle of pornography addiction. If you want a step-by-step guide, this is it.”
Josh McDowellCru Ministry