Over the last year or so, my colleagues and I at Nuance Behavior have been developing a way to measure the behavior change potential of apps. Well, we finally have something we are happy with, and have used it to evaluate seven popular exercise apps.

For me, the big learning was how much better apps are at “Little e” behavior change vs “Big E” behavior change. Which is to say they are better at getting someone to [e]ngage with the app itself than they are able to get them to [E]ngage with exercise. The latter is just a more difficult problem and requires a bit of behavioral science nuance to get right. The science of habits continues to be underappreciated even when it comes to apps that have the explicit mission to help users with habits!

You can download the report here