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Gage
Gage

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Stop Stressing Users OUT! 😳🙅🏽‍♀️

Lately I've been working on my project "Hyper Writer" which is supposed to help me to write more.

One of the ways it does this is by trying to convince you to write 750 words each day without editing.

This is great because it acts as a sort of "mind dump" that helps you get your thoughts out and find things that would be great to write about.

The problem is, I wasn't doing it.

At first I tried to introduce a sort of "streak calendar" which would color days you've written and leave the other ones a depressing gray color:

Screen Shot 2021-05-07 at 6.03.04 AM

But lately when I pulled it up I just kind of felt this dread. I'm a busy parent of 3 small kids... I don't have a ton of time to write. Even 30 mins can be a big time commitment for me and often if life gets in the way I feel like a failure.

More positivity, less guilt

The answer of how to improve it came from an unexpected source. Trying to make the landing page.

The more I read and watched about marketing the more I realized an important principle:

Don't talk about the work they are going to have to do
talk about the benefits they are going to get

I know, sounds like "no duh!" but look at how much work my interface was implying that I do:

Like this

Now compare the new one:

Message about how we should write down today's troubles and unburden your mind

Now I click it every day! Let's dive into this a bit more

Button Text

Before: 😰 Why would I want to WRITE TODAY'S BONE, that's just more work for me, it's daunting because I know I'm going to have to write 750 words

After: 🧘‍♀️"Unburden your mind" feels like such a relief! Of course I want to click that button!

Worry about Streaks after you succeed

Before: 😡 the streaks calendar creates an insta-guilt trip at the start of each day. You walk into the app and it says, "guess what! You're already behind again!"

After: 🤗 Hiding the chart till AFTER I succeed stops the instant guilt trip. Also, the message under the button tells you just 1 word is enough, but you know that when I start writing I'll write more than that.

Result

Done it every day

So maybe try making more changes towards calm and positivity and it see if it helps you too!

References

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