In the previous article, we’ve talked about what is & how we can make an engagement plan. Other than to help conceptualize & document your app’s engagement method, we can use the concept of engagement plan to analyze what engagement methods are being used by other apps. For this article, we will be analyzing down Forest app’s engagement plan.

4 Intrinsic Motivation

In the previous article, we’ve talked about 4 intrinsic motivations of people & how an engagement plan targets them. In an engagement plan analysis, we can use them again to separate methods used by the Forest app. Those 4 intrinsic motivations are:

1. Mastery: The feedback of continuous improvement
2. Meaning: The sense of accomplishment
3. Autonomy: The ability to make a choice
4. Community: The feeling of being needed

Mastery

The Forest app tracks the exact time you do a pomodoro session, how long you do it, and for what tag. At any time, you can see the statistics of previously done pomodoro by day, week, month, or year through the overview menu. This feature motivates you rationally by being able to check & compare the detailed progress of your focused work session

Other than being able to see the detailed statistics of your progress, the app also has a leaderboard & achievements feature. This further motivates you rationally by being a progress bar you can finish, and emotionally by being something you can brag about.

Meaning

The Forest app has a “Real Forest” program that partners with Trees for the Future – tree-planting organizations – to plant real trees on earth. If you opt for the pro version of the app, every time you finish a pomodoro session, the forest team donates to its partner to have real trees planted.

This gives us emotional attachment & motivation to us, telling us that not only do we gain mastery of our focus, but also help the earth in the process.

If you don’t feel like doing a focused work session, you can set custom phrases that will pop up while you’re doing a pomodoro session to emotionally boost your motivation & remind you why you’re doing it.

Autonomy

Before you start a pomodoro session, you can choose what type of tree to plant. The types of trees you can plant are varied, ranging from pine trees, cherry blossoms, cacti, bamboo, and even to decorations such as a carved pumpkin & tree house.

You can buy any of those types of trees using the currency you get every time you complete a pomodoro session. These customization options give an emotional attachment between you & your virtual forest.

Other than that, you can customize your pomodoro setup quite extensively. You can change the tag to describe what you’re working on, change the mode between timer & stopwatch, and set the session timer accordingly. This gives a lot of rational autonomy toward your focused work session.

Community

In the Forest app, you can invite your friend/work group to do the pomodoro session together. If one of you breaks the pomodoro session, everyone in the group will get the consequence of breaking their session too. This gives an emotional responsibility & accountability towards your work session so that you’ll be less likely to slack off.

At certain periods, you can also buy limited types of trees. If you manage to save up & buy them, you can show them to your friends as a bragging point. This gives a lot of emotional satisfaction & a topic to talk about.

Conclusion

The Forest app manages to design engagement methods that target the 4 intrinsic motivations of people. Each of the engagement methods is interconnected and works together to help you have routine deeply focused work sessions. If you want to design a live-service app with an engagement method that works well, you should study the Forest app.