Thanks for the hunt @robjama! Hey everybody, we’re excited to be on Product Hunt today!
Boost is a mobile app that uses social and financial stakes, as well as data, to help you follow through and accomplish your Health & Fitness goals.
Make a goal on the app and input how much money you are willing to wager that you will reach the goal by a specific date. If you achieve the goal, you keep your stake. If you don't, you lose your money. 💸
Boost uses data collected by HealthKit enabled apps, wearable technology and the phone itself, to track your progress.
So what about the funds from unsuccessful goals? We donate a significant percentage to charity at the end of every month. We’re launching with a local charity and we will be adding more in the coming months.
@PaulYW_ and I have been working on Boost for the past few months. The app came from the desire to find the best way to stay motivated to stick to the fitness goals we set.
Consequences and incentives are powerful drivers to help people achieve their goals. Boost uses the proven concept of Loss Aversion. The idea is that losing money doesn’t feel good, so you’ll do what you can to keep it. Some studies show that our aversion to loss is twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. 💰
Even though using HealthKit data has benefits, we really like the social element of being held accountable by your friends & family. So we’ve launched with the ability to share a summary of your goal as a Boost Card.
Set a goal, tell the world, walk your talk.🚀
We’re launching on iPhone now, and we have many plans on improving the product in the future.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback!
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@_shinec so technically if you achieve the goal, you don't get anything, you just not getting charge.
There is Pact App, which doing the same, but at least they give you money for completing your goal.
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@dany20mh@_shinec I would imagine that sort of system could be easily abused which is why you wouldn't want to go in that direction. They could still reward the user with discounts of some sort by using something like kiip.
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@benbowdene@_shinec Why would it be abused?
I been using Pact for more than 4 years now and I been doing my goal and if I miss my goal they charge me the money and give it to other users which they done the goal, and when I do my goal, I get money back.
You call that abuse, but you didn't mentioned even what you do with the money that you charging the user that miss their goal? to me you are looking for profit rather than making incentive for user to reach their goal.
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@dany20mh I think they should make the profit from it. What's wrong with that?
Paying users could be a fun growth hack for the short term, but you have to be careful creating a system like that. It would be abused quickly, for example, by creating 500+ goals that could be completed in a day.
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@benbowdene@_shinec there is nothing wrong with making profit with that, but not taking the whole thing and giving anything to user, you can set pool for the money and return at least 80% of the money to other users that achieved their goal based on easiness to hardness of their goal and keep 20% or less of it for profit and improving the system.
You pretty much easily can prevent abuse of they system by putting minimum requirement on the goal, for example Pact, you put your goal for 3 days run or walk and then you need to accomplish 10,000 steps in those days, and you will get money for those 3 days you accomplished, if you miss days you get charge for the money you said you will pay for each day.
Yes, you can sit down and shake your phone up and down or your fitness tracker to get 10,000 steps, but that's like an exercise to me also.
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I love healthkit as a destination for all my data. But doesn't it leave a massive hole open for people to abuse your app?
@tombielecki Hey thanks! Can you please elaborate on how it makes an opportunity for people to abuse the app?
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@_shinec well can't anyone manually enter the data in healthkit to say they reached their goal? or if they manually log it in an app that syncs to healthkit.
@tombielecki Hey thanks for the clarification. Actually you can prevent manually entered data on the Health app from being read by the app, this would allow the app to read only sources in HealthKit. So it works great for goals such as Walking or Running, but you're correct in that for some goals such as Water intake--which requires the user to log data into other apps that syncs to HealthKit--, it would require a level of honesty by the individual. Our objective is to help people stick to their Health & Fitness goals, and we love HealthKit as a destination for the data as well!
These sort of apps always worry me regards ethics, i.e. what if someone with a gambling addiction starts using it and overworks themselves to reach the goal? Or what if someone makes a bet, a few days later they need the money back for an emergency and don't have time/ability to complete the goal, or complete the goal but hurt themselves doing so? Encouraging people to exercise and motivating people should be a positive energy, this doesn't feel positive
@libby_ayres Hey we developed the app to help people stick to their Health & Fitness goals. We know that different people are motivated in different ways, so this app might not be right for some people. We've made the app to be open and flexible for the individual to set whatever goal that they see fit. For example, we prompt users to set an attainable target based on their level of experience. We use the concept of loss aversion as one of the ways to stay accountable to the goal. Some studies show that our aversion to loss is twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. Our users have said their experiences have been extremely positive, and it really has helped them achieve their goals :)
@amirmasoudabdol We plan on using FB friends for a future update.
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@_shinec You can still use it, by letting people to sign-up with their email and then give you access to Facebook if they want to. But forcing it like this, I don't think it's the best solution. It took Gyroscope 2, 3 years to also add email sign-up (only have FB), and I'm sure lots of people just didn't sign-up because they just don't like to sign-up with Facebook, or don't like to give extra access right away. In this way, they (you) just block people from entering and using the core functionality of their (your) app. 🤷🏻♂️
Beside that, it's a nice clean app, saying from screenshots of course! 😊
Boost
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Vinyl Recorder
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