The goal of a fitness app, including gamified fitness apps, should be to help users achieve healthy fitness goals.
Theoretically, streaks are a way to encourage and recognise commitment – often people will use streaks to motivate themselves in writing a book or completing chores. However, it's inadvisable for people to exercise every single day for weeks on end. Of course, apps could build in rest days and lower-impact exercises to make streaks easier to maintain, but very few do and even then, it's hard to know the user's context – perhaps they've been ill and they need even longer to rest. It's pretty clear to me that streaks, as commonly implemented, are merely a way to boost retention at the expense of the user's interest.
I think leaderboards are fine in some circumstances. We use them in our own one-off virtual race events so people can benchmark themselves against others. However, we don't maintain weekly or monthly leaderboards for fitness in general because they end up being boring or even demotivating. When I had a Fitbit, the rankings were always the same, the walkers in London always trouncing the drivers in the US. I expect the only effect was to make the people at the bottom of the leaderboard depressed. For everyone who feels great ascending a leaderboard, there's someone who feels bad descending it.
My career in fitness gamification is based around the idea making exercising genuinely fun is the best way to motivate people. Competitive sports do that for a lot of people, but it can be relatively inaccessible. Zombies, Run! uses immersive audio storytelling and actual gameplay rather than just badges and XP and levels to make things exciting. It's not for everyone but it works for a lot of people.
Theoretically, streaks are a way to encourage and recognise commitment – often people will use streaks to motivate themselves in writing a book or completing chores. However, it's inadvisable for people to exercise every single day for weeks on end. Of course, apps could build in rest days and lower-impact exercises to make streaks easier to maintain, but very few do and even then, it's hard to know the user's context – perhaps they've been ill and they need even longer to rest. It's pretty clear to me that streaks, as commonly implemented, are merely a way to boost retention at the expense of the user's interest.
I think leaderboards are fine in some circumstances. We use them in our own one-off virtual race events so people can benchmark themselves against others. However, we don't maintain weekly or monthly leaderboards for fitness in general because they end up being boring or even demotivating. When I had a Fitbit, the rankings were always the same, the walkers in London always trouncing the drivers in the US. I expect the only effect was to make the people at the bottom of the leaderboard depressed. For everyone who feels great ascending a leaderboard, there's someone who feels bad descending it.
My career in fitness gamification is based around the idea making exercising genuinely fun is the best way to motivate people. Competitive sports do that for a lot of people, but it can be relatively inaccessible. Zombies, Run! uses immersive audio storytelling and actual gameplay rather than just badges and XP and levels to make things exciting. It's not for everyone but it works for a lot of people.