1. Aligning Incentives

The first step in the Trophy Method is to build a product so good that users want to build a habit around it—and want your app to hack their brains into building that habit.

The Core Value Loop

Your business incentive is to ensure that your app drives consistent, regular usage. The more time spent in your app, the better. But blindly following that incentive can hurt your business if it doesn't align with the user's incentive. It is therefore critical that you give the user a clear incentive that aligns with yours—a reason to regularly use your app.

You can do this with a core value loop—a cycle of action and reward in which users don't just want to return but need to return to fully realize the app’s value.

Identify the Core Value Proposition

Before thinking about engagement tactics, ask: What problem does my app solve that requires ongoing interaction? Some examples:

• A language learning app only delivers results if the user practices regularly.
• A budgeting app loses effectiveness if spending isn’t tracked consistently.
• A fitness app needs repeated workouts to show progress.

If a product provides value without requiring habitual use, forcing frequent engagement will create friction rather than retention. Aligning incentives starts with designing a product where regular usage is the natural path to success. If you don’t see a way to make this work in your app due to the value creation being completely disconnected from user engagement, the Trophy Method isn’t the right approach for you.

“People ask, ‘Do you optimize for engagement or learning?’ And the answer is simple: we focus on engagement because you will not learn anything if you’re not coming back to the app.”

—Jackson Shuttleworth, Retention Team Lead at Duolingo

Find the “Aha” Moment

The aha moment is when a user first experiences the core value of the app and understands why they should return. This moment should:

• Be obvious and compelling to the user early on.
• Make it clear that value accumulates with continued use.
• Provide immediate reinforcement (e.g., a progress tracker, first success milestone).

For example:

• Duolingo: Completing the first lesson and seeing a streak count.
• Strava: Getting likes and comments on the first recorded workout.
• YNAB: Watching spending trends update in real-time after logging expenses.

Without a strong aha moment, users may engage once but have no clear reason to return. Importantly, the product must demonstrate why habitual use leads to better outcomes right from the start. Duolingo, for example, shows users that committing to a streak increases their odds of learning a language significantly:

If streaks were instead earned by sharing posts on social media, or if users didn’t clearly see the connection between a daily streak and their desired outcome, the feature wouldn’t work (or, even worse, it would have a negative impact).

Don’t Force Unnecessary Engagement

Not all products require daily or even frequent engagement, and if you try to artificially increase usage without a real need, you misalign incentives instead of aligning them. This is the reason for gamification’s bad reputation in some circles—apps have applied gamification tactics without ensuring that incentives are aligned. Some common pitfalls include:

• Notification Fatigue: Constant reminders to open an app without delivering real value.
• Unnecessary Check-ins: Forcing daily interactions without a meaningful purpose.
• Gimmicky Engagement Loops: Adding leaderboards, streaks, or rewards where they don’t align with the core value.

Instead, focus on delivering an aha moment that provides value to the user and clearly demonstrates that habitual use will compound that value.

Once you’ve designed a product that provides more value with regular user engagement, you’re ready to focus on actually establishing the habit.