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You're in — now let's get Summit ready for the trail.
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Nice work. Come back tomorrow to earn the Early Bird badge.
Starts at zero — real work discarded
The user literally just created an account, yet the meter credits nothing. Same real work as the AFTER flow, zero perceived progress.
Strava's setup shows "You've joined the world's largest team!" directly above a 0/4 meter — the endowed-progress miss, in the wild (our audit)
The slow-early bar
Two questions in and the bar has only crept to 20%. An early trickle reads as "this will take forever."
18 randomized tests of honest constant progress bars: effect statistically indistinguishable from zero; slow-early bars raised quit odds 1.56x (Villar et al. 2013)
The stage reset
A celebration — then a second bar sitting at 0%. Every reset re-runs the cold-start penalty the user already paid once.
Our audit (n=47 flows/screens, top iOS apps, Aug 2026): 87% of determinable flows start the user above zero; 81% of setup checklists ship with at least one pre-checked item; 14% of flows still reset the bar at a stage boundary
Completion-contingent badge
The flow ends by paying the user a token for finishing — which quietly taxes the motivation they'd otherwise bring back tomorrow.
Completion-contingent rewards: d = -0.36 on later voluntary engagement; informational feedback: +0.33 (Deci, Koestner & Ryan 1999)
Account created. Email verified.
What's your next summit goal?
One question — it shapes your whole plan.
Get a nudge when it counts?
We'll send two short reminders a week while you train for "Summit a 14,000 ft peak". Nothing else.
Your first trail plan is ready
Built around your goal: Summit a 14,000 ft peak
Good morning, Alex
Day 1 · Blue Ridge Overlook · 2.8 mi
The endowed start
Same flow, but steps 1-2 — account and email — are pre-credited as real, completed work. The bar opens at 40%, and the tooltip on the percentage shows the math.
Cards pre-stamped 2 of 10 beat empty 8-stamp cards: 34% vs 19% completion, identical real work (Nunes & Dreze 2006)
Front-loaded motion
One tap moves the bar 40% to 60% — big, honest movement early, instead of the BEFORE flow's 0-10-20 trickle across three screens.
The framing flip
Early, the label counts what's done — "3 of 5 done." Past halfway it flips to what's left — "1 step left." Watch the line under the bar change between these two screens.
People respond to whichever number is smaller — done-count early, remaining-count late (Koo & Fishbach 2012)
A receipt, not a badge
Completion is confirmed as information — your tracking works from day one — not paid out as a token reward.
Completion-contingent rewards: d = -0.36 on later voluntary engagement; informational feedback: +0.33 (Deci, Koestner & Ryan 1999)
One continuous journey
No second zero. The meter that opened at 40% is the same meter that finished at 100% — and the app lands straight on Day 1 of the plan the user chose.