LATAM rebuilt its loyalty program around Core Drives, not bigger points: mileage growth up 123%, credit card acquisition up 153%, redemptions up 1,407%. Same airline, same customers, different architecture. octalysisgroup.com/2023/09/l…

Gamified sales at Navo Orbico (5,500 employees, 512 brands): sales up 28.6%, activity KPIs up 60%+, 99.5% participation. The one holdout was on pregnancy leave. Via our licensing consortium: octalysisgroup.com/2018/05/o…

Motivation is only half of behavior. BJ Fogg: behavior needs motivation, ability, and a trigger at the same time. Make the action easy and give a prompt, and behavior happens even when motivation is low: octalysisgroup.com/2021/05/h…

Half of chronic patients don't take meds as prescribed. Up to $300B in US costs, 125,000 preventable deaths. Reminders can't fix it: the fastest way to kill a fear-based app's anxiety is to uninstall it. octalysisgroup.com/2022/03/g…

On Pfizer's Sidekick app for IBD patients: 30% fewer dropouts, 3x milestone achievement, 68% daily engagement at 6 months. Behavioral design beats reminders. octalysisgroup.com/2022/11/e…

Physical therapy is boring and painful, so most patients quit. VR does not remove the pain. It gives the same repetitive movement a reason to be repeated: score, progress, a world that reacts. Yet in the end, even though it's immersive, it's still linear, just prettier and more intense, but not necessarily engaging. It is definitely not more engaging, and definitely not built for habit formation. For that, we need something completely different. octalysisgroup.com/how-vr-an…

Most churn stories start with a convenient villain: a competitor, a price change, a bad release. Churn is not triggers. It is architecture: how much motivation your product holds when nothing new happens. octalysisgroup.com/2026/05/r…

Banks spent a decade dismantling the front office, then replaced it with an app that only speaks up when something goes wrong. Neobanks win by designing why people open the app. octalysisgroup.com/2026/07/t…

Top performers don't quit after a bad quarter. They quit when engagement in their career journey dead-ends.Employee experience has 4 phases: Discovery, Onboarding, Scaffolding, Endgame and human motivation needs to be optimized throughout. The Endgame is the most difficult to design for. octalysisgroup.com/2017/02/4…

Whatnot did $8B in GMV in 2025 and became the #1 shopping app in the US and UK. Not by adding features. By making live shopping feel like play: live auctions, collectibles, and time-pressured deals. octalysisgroup.com/2026/05/g…

Before a user reads a word, an older brain judges it: dangerous or safe. The mid brain adds meaning. Only then does logic get access. Design for the brain that decides before reading. octalysisgroup.com/2015/05/o…

A reward doesn't build a habit. It rents behavior, and the rent goes up. Pause every reward for 30 days. Usage drops more than 50%? You built zero durable habits. octalysisgroup.com/2026/08/w…

The models are converging. Open-weight models trail the frontier by months, not years, and most users cannot tell which one answered them. When everyone can reach a great model, the model stops being the moat. The question that is left is behavioral: whose product do people come back to when nothing forces the choice? That is not a technical question. It is a motivation question. octalysisgroup.com/2026/06/a…

We are not a gamification company. Gamification adds game elements. Behavioral design asks why a person would care in the first place. The distinction produces fundamentally different results. The framework behind that thinking: octalysisgroup.com/octalysis…

Character.AI: 29 min sessions. Copilot: 2-3 min. One builds relationships. One builds shortcuts. We help companies design AI products that create relationships, not just outputs. octalysisgroup.com/2026/06/a…

Microsoft's support teams had access to one of the most capable AI systems ever deployed inside an enterprise. Most of them barely touched it. The ones who did treated Copilot like a search box: type, copy, close. 🧵 --- There was no journey to return to. Nothing connected one session to the next. The tenth interaction felt exactly like the first. Every session started from zero, and zero is where most users quietly stayed. --- Run it through the Octalysis experience phases and the diagnosis is obvious. No Onboarding loop that delivers a first real win. No Scaffolding that carries someone toward mastery. No Endgame that gives a veteran something to become. --- Compare that to anything people return to daily without a reminder. There's always a reason to come back that exists before the need arises: a streak, a progression, a craft to refine. The model was never the problem. The experience was a flat line. --- The most capable AI ever deployed in that org, and the design around it was missing entirely. I broke down the full pattern here: octalysisgroup.com/2026/06/a…

95% of AI agent pilots produce no measurable P&L impact. The agents are installed. The licenses are paid. The tools are ignored. That is not a model problem. It is a motivation design problem, and the fix starts before the tool does. octalysisgroup.com/2026/08/a…

Plenti loyalty program: dead in 3 years. Pure points, no identity, no community. When economics shifted, nothing held members. We design programs that survive competitive pressure. octalysisgroup.com/2026/05/c…

Most products design for Discovery and Onboarding. They skip Scaffolding and Endgame. That is where engagement dies. We design for all four Experience Phases.

The 21-day habit rule has no empirical backing. UCL research: 66 to 254 days. If your product retention assumes three weeks, the timeline is wrong. We design for the real numbers. octalysisgroup.com/2026/04/t…