This is part of a series where I deep-dive into my favourite First Draft Pro features and how they were designed, because I love understanding the story behind a thing, and you might too! If you’d like to give your own feedback on this or any other feature (I love feedback, especially yours) you can do that here.
Writing a book is hard. Particularly if reduced dopamine availability (in the case of ADHD) makes a long term goal with no immediate payoff feel literally impossible.
So, when working on goals, streaks and other things that are meant to help drive motivation, I thought a lot about what actually helps us keep showing up for ourselves and our big dreams: how we establish (and maintain) a healthy, sustainable writing practice, and build momentum for the long haul without it feeling positively Sisyphean.
After a ton of research, I realised that the two big problems we’re trying to solve are how to make it easier to start writing and easier to keep going.
Of course part of this is about being able to set goals, being able to see your writing streak, celebration moments when you achieve a goal, and reminder emails each week celebrating your writing progress. Most of what I’m talking about here is that stuff. But, it’s also worth mentioning that it’s also about the whole feel of the app, not just those individual features.
It’s as important that the overall design is clean, clear, and reduces overwhelm while you’re plotting and writing. It’s super important for the process of writing to be super visible. That means that your outline stays accessible while you write, and your notes stay pinned.
Staying motivated, for me, is also about having a beautiful ‘home’ for my writing. Something I’m excited to open each day. Which brings me to…
Core design concepts
Design is about form and function, and research is super important! These concepts shaped my approach to designing for motivation:
Reward and motivation as a tool for staying engaged in completing a long, complex project.
Promoting healthy writing habits that are built around consistent effort.
How to reduce task initiation and paralysis by making goals more trivial and less overwhelming.
How dopamine feedback loops with celebration moments can help with motivation.
Fostering psychological momentum by making wordcount progress super visible.
The damage to motivation by negativity bias, and how we help to support positive reinforcement by only celebrating progress and never sending “you haven’t written today” loss aversion emails.
Identity reinforcement around ‘being a writer’ by helping writers to show up for themselves every day.
Dashboard 1.0
The first version of the dashboard had daily goals and a tracker for your wordcount per day, but no steaks or celebration moments.
Redesigning the dashboard
I did a big redesign of the dashboard this year, trying to bring more fun, more space, and streaks and goals into one place :)
In short: goals, celebration moments, and designing for delight helps to set-up a dopamine feedback loop, and provides a framework for rewards and motivation. Streaks help to short-circuit paralysis by providing an impetus for task initiation, encouraging consistent effort and creating psychological momentum.
Plus, First Draft Pro now has celebration animations when you hit a milestone, but an off switch for them, in case it becomes distracting. And: you only get emails to celebrate your writing progress. No green birds will come knocking down your door if you don’t log in for a day 🦉
🖤 To reward you for getting to the end of my big nerd out :) here’s a discount code for 30% off any First Draft Pro subscription for 12 months: DESIGNDEEPDIVES