01
Research
Interviews, surveys, and behaviour observations across active and inactive learners.
02 — Case Study
Decode DFC — A behavioural UX case study on learner momentum
Designing momentum before designing interfaces — a behavioural study of why self-paced learners quietly fall off, and what would keep them going.
Behavioural UXUX StrategyService DesignLearningResearchSystems Thinking
- Project
- Decode DFC
- Role
- UX Researcher · Strategist
- Duration
- 14-Day Hackathon
- Team
- 4 Designers · Multidisciplinary
- Scope
- Behavioural UX · Service Design
- Status
- Proposal Accepted · Implementation in Progress
02 — Overview
Why did this project matter?
A learning cohort with the right content — and the wrong rhythm.
Decode DFC is a self-paced fellowship learning experience. The material was strong. Joiners were motivated. Yet week after week, consistency quietly slipped away.
02
Behavior
The turning point wasn't confusion — it was quiet loss of momentum after week two.
03
Strategy
Design principles and interventions built to sustain motion, not add features.
03 — Research
What changed our understanding?
They didn't drop out. They quietly stopped starting.
Field interviews, learner surveys, behaviour observations, and secondary reading on habit formation. Every quote was mapped back to a decision — not a persona.
Interview planning and participant tracking used during primary research.
Artifact · Research Ops
14
Learner interviews
4
Methods used
22h
Conversation time
60+
Coded observations
Voices from the cohort
“The first week felt exciting. By week three, opening the app started to feel like a task.”
Learner · Cohort 2
“I didn't know if I was behind or ahead. So I stopped opening it.”
Learner · Cohort 1
“Everyone else looked further along. I quietly stopped posting.”
Learner · Cohort 3
“Night shifts, family, life — I meant to come back. I just never did.”
Learner · Cohort 2
Research findings
Insight
Learners understood the program goals. What they couldn't see was what came next in their own journey.
Barriers takeaway
Competing responsibilities and unclear next steps consistently reduced weekly participation — long before content difficulty became the reason.
Key Behavioural Insight
The problem wasn't poor content.
The problem was loss of momentum.
Motivation stayed high on day one. What eroded — quietly, week after week — was the small daily reason to return. Uncertainty grew. Confidence faded. Learners didn't quit; they simply stopped starting.
04 — Strategy
How did research influence our decisions?
We stopped designing features. We started designing motion.
Before recommending anything, we reframed the brief. Every principle below is traceable to a specific pattern in the research.
The reframe
How we got from research to recommendation
A traceable chain
01 · Research
14 interviews · surveys · behaviour observation
02 · Behaviour Pattern
Silent drop-off between weeks 2 and 4
03 · Root Cause
Loss of momentum — not loss of interest
04 · Design Principle
Design for Momentum · Reduce Uncertainty
05 · Recommendation
Strategic interventions, not more features
Design principles
Six principles to protect learner momentum.
01
Design for Momentum
Optimise for the choice to return, not the choice to start.
From research
Learners who felt daily motion kept going; the rest quietly stopped.
02
Reduce Uncertainty
Always answer 'where am I, and what's next?' — in one glance.
From research
'I didn't know if I was behind or ahead. So I stopped opening it.'
03
Celebrate Small Wins
Progress must be felt after every meaningful action, not only at the end.
From research
Modules that hid progress until completion had the sharpest drop-off.
04
Create Visible Progress
Show learners a rhythm they can recognise as their own.
From research
Behaviour clusters showed 'momentum keepers' relied on visible cues.
05
Support Reflection
Give learners a way to see their week — not just their tasks.
From research
Reflection moments were absent in every silent drop-off story.
06
Keep Learners Moving Forward
Every surface should hand off the next low-effort step.
From research
Learners who lost the 'next step' lost the week soon after.
The behavioural backbone
Momentum Model — the strategic backbone
A loop, not a funnel
01 · Cue
A tiny prompt tied to something the learner already does.
02 · Small Win
One action that finishes cleanly in under two minutes.
03 · Signal
A visible marker that yesterday counted toward today.
04 · Next Step
The obvious, low-effort thing to do tomorrow.
From research to ideas
Ideation board — four designers translating research into intervention concepts.
Artifact · Synthesis
Where the strategy took shape
We didn't design features. We designed reasons to return.
Every sticky note traced back to a specific behavioural pattern in the interviews — and forward to one of the interventions on the next screen.
- 01
Daily Cue
One small opening action, tied to a habit learners already had.
- 02
Micro-Wins
Visible progress after every meaningful action — not only at module end.
- 03
Quiet Peer Signals
Structured, low-stakes signals that replaced highlight-reel posts.
Editorial note
Ideas were only kept if they answered a specific quote from the research.
How the redesigned learner journey behaves
Learner flow — Discovery → Stage 4 → long-term impact, staged around momentum, not modules.
Artifact · Service Design
Behaviour insights, in the flow
Every stage answers a question a learner was already asking.
Where am I?
Orientation replaces guesswork before daily actions begin.
What's next?
One low-effort next step is always visible — never a menu.
Did that count?
Reality Check moments surface progress the learner can feel.
05 — Features
What changed because of those insights?
Four strategic interventions — not four features.
Each intervention traces back to a specific behaviour we observed, and forward to an outcome we can measure. Interface concepts stay supporting; the recommendation is the hero.
01 · Intervention
Implementation in ProgressProblem
Learners had no clear reason to open the app today.
Insight
Momentum lives in the day, not the week.
Recommendation
Daily Cue
A single opening cue that names one small action, under two minutes.
Expected impact
Learners feel a daily reason to return — not a weekly obligation.
02 · Intervention
Implementation in ProgressProblem
Progress was invisible until a module was fully complete.
Insight
Learners quit when they can't feel forward motion.
Recommendation
Micro-Wins
A visible win after every meaningful action, not only at the end.
Expected impact
Fewer silent drop-offs between weeks two and four.
03 · Intervention
Problem
Open peer channels rewarded the already-confident and silenced the rest.
Insight
'Someone like me kept going' beats a highlight-reel post.
Recommendation
Quiet Peer Signals
Replace public posts with structured, low-stakes signals of shared progress.
Expected impact
Lurkers convert into weekly, quiet participants.
04 · Intervention
Problem
Reminders were treated as noise, not care.
Insight
Contextual nudges outperform blanket notifications.
Recommendation
Earned Nudges
Send only after a missed cue — one message, tied to what the learner already committed to.
Expected impact
Higher open rate on the nudges that actually matter.
06 — Experience
How would learners experience those changes?
A cohort week, redesigned around returning.
No screens invented. Just the sequence of moments — cues, wins, signals — that a learner would move through if these recommendations went live.
The Proposed Learner Journey
Artifact · Storyboard · 10 frames
Mapped as a story before it became a screen — each frame anchors one behavioural moment, from Discovery through Long-term Impact.
01 · Discover
Curiosity meets the program.
02 · Getting Started
Orientation replaces guesswork.
03 · Join & Build Streak
Daily cue turns into a rhythm.
04 · Stage 1 — Learn & Plan
First real task, kept short and finishable.
05 · Stage 1 Completed
The first felt win.
06 · Know Yourself
Reflection makes learning personal.
07 · Create Your Codex
Learners author their own path.
08 · Reality Check
Progress is surfaced, not assumed.
09 · Journey Complete
Momentum turned into identity.
10 · Long-term Impact
The learner keeps going — without the app.
Confusion → Confidence · emotion curve
Confusion
Week 1Feels like
Motivated but unsure where the daily rhythm lives.
Design move
A single opening cue names the daily action, not the weekly goal.
Commitment
Week 2Feels like
First real friction — life gets in the way of long sessions.
Design move
Micro-wins keep progress alive on the busy days.
Consistency
Weeks 3–4Feels like
The critical window where silent slippers used to disappear.
Design move
Earned nudges + peer signals catch drift before it becomes a gap.
Confidence
Weeks 5–6Feels like
The learner starts describing themselves as 'the kind of person who shows up'.
Design move
Momentum dashboard reflects identity back to them.
07 — Validation
How will we know this worked?
Proposal accepted. Implementation underway.
We're not claiming outcomes we haven't earned. Instead, we've defined the framework by which success will be measured once the interventions are live.
Status
Proposal Accepted
The behavioural reframe and design principles were endorsed by cohort leads.
Status
Implementation in ProgressImplementation Underway
Daily Cue and Micro-Wins are being built into the next cohort cycle.
Status
Success Metrics Proposed
Five outcome measures, each linked to a specific intervention.
How success will be measured
A framework, not a scoreboard.
01
Retention
Learners who remain active across the full cohort — not just week one.
Tied to
Daily Cue · Micro-Wins
02
Weekly Participation
The share of a cohort returning on at least three days each week.
Tied to
Daily Cue · Earned Nudges
03
Mentor Engagement
How often mentors are pulled into learning moments, not admin ones.
Tied to
Quiet Peer Signals
04
Activity Completion
Meaningful actions finished — measured continuously, not only at module end.
Tied to
Micro-Wins
05
Learner Confidence
Self-reported sense of 'I'm keeping up' across weeks two, four, and six.
Tied to
Momentum backbone (all four interventions)
These are proposed measures, not reported outcomes. They'll be baselined against the current cohort before the interventions go live.
08 — Reflection
How did this project change the way I think as a designer?
I stopped starting with screens.
Decode DFC pushed me from 'what should this interface do' to 'what should this week feel like' — a shift in altitude I want to carry into every future project.
01
What challenged me
Holding back on interface ideas long enough to see the real behavioural problem. Every instinct wanted to jump to a screen.
02
What changed my thinking
That the most valuable move a designer makes is often invisible — reframing the problem so the right solution becomes obvious.
03
How this influences my future work
I now start every project by asking what behaviour we're trying to change, and only then what surface we might design.
Collaborative process
14-Day Design Sprint6 Team MembersProposal AcceptedImplementation Underway
Six teammates, one shared behavioural lens.
Mars Monarchs · Working session
A multidisciplinary team held the research together — my contribution led the behavioural framing, momentum model, and the reframe that shaped the final proposal.
A closing thought
The most impactful design decision wasn't creating a better interface.
It was discovering the right problem to solve.
Great learning experiences aren't built by adding more content — they're built by helping people keep going.
End of case study · Decode DFC · 2025
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Museum of Spices
A multi-sensory museum experience translating the stories, culture and history of spices into space, sound and touch.
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