Why building better habits requires designing for the body, not the mind.
Technology has mastered the art of inducing habit formation, but mostly not for the right things.
The same design principles that keep us scrolling late into the night could just as easily help us build restorative routines. They rarely do.
Meditation apps, habit trackers, and digital wellness tools all share the same problem: high intent, low consistency. Millions of downloads, almost no long-term use. Studies show that most users—over 70%—of wellness apps churn within the first two weeks, even when they report positive experiences (Baumel et al., 2019). People start with genuine motivation, but the habit fades. Not because they don’t care, but because most wellness products are designed for attention, not human wiring.
We already know how to make habits sticky. Behavioral psychologists and product designers have spent decades refining the architecture of engagement (Fogg, 2009; Eyal, 2014). The problem is that those lessons have been applied almost exclusively to products that consume attention rather than restore it.
Nir Eyal’s book Hooked described a four-step loop that underlies nearly every addictive technology:
Trigger → Action → Variable Reward → Investment (Eyal, 2014).
A notification pings (trigger), we tap (action), we see something new or unpredictable (reward), and we scroll or post again (investment). Each cycle strengthens the loop. It’s frictionless, fast, and physiologically satisfying.
The brain’s reward systems are tuned not to pleasure itself, but to anticipation. Dopamine firing increases when there’s uncertainty—the promise of reward without predictability (Schultz, 2016). Social media and news feeds exploit this perfectly. The result is a self-reinforcing feedback loop between stimulus and nervous system: a habit that doesn’t need intention to sustain itself.
Now consider how most “good” habits are designed. Meditation apps, workout plans, or breathing tools often ask the user to do everything the brain resists: stop what they’re doing, open an app, make a choice, and sit still. The trigger is weak, the action requires effort, and the reward is delayed or abstract. Friction kills products.
We all know what would make us feel better—sleep, movement, stillness, time offline. But as behavioral science repeatedly shows, knowing is not doing. Motivation decays quickly without immediate reinforcement (Lally et al., 2010).
Simple doesn’t mean straightforward. Easy doesn’t mean enjoyable. Accessibility doesn’t guarantee repetition.
Wellness products often rely on motivation and willpower to drive use, yet these are the most unstable forces in human behavior. BJ Fogg’s research at Stanford showed that habits form reliably only when the desired behavior is tied to a strong cue and made effortless to perform (Fogg, 2009). Habits that endure don’t depend on motivation; they depend on frictionless cues that the body can respond to automatically.
At Ohm, the design challenge was never “how do we make meditation more appealing?” but “how do we make calm more repeatable?”
The solution began with physiology. The product needed to engage the same automatic systems that regulate breathing, heart rate, and attention—systems that function beneath conscious awareness.
This loop mirrors the Hooked model but with an inverted intent. Instead of hijacking attention, it conditions presence. Instead of screen-based variable rewards, it relies on consistent physiological feedback—calm that can be felt and tracked over time.
Humans repeat what feels rewarding in the moment. That’s why checking a phone notification can feel irresistible: the brain learns that a small action yields an immediate result (Montague & Berns, 2002).
Resonance breathing works on the same circuitry but through a different pathway. Slow, rhythmic breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, releasing acetylcholine and activating the parasympathetic system—the body’s internal brake (Porges, 2007). Heart rate and blood pressure decline, producing a sense of relief that acts as a natural reinforcement signal.
Over time, this conditioning strengthens. The body begins to associate a specific sensory pattern—the light, the hum, the touch—with safety. The reward becomes internal, generated by the nervous system rather than the environment.
This is how habits shift from cognitive to embodied: through repetition that produces predictable physiological outcomes.
Most behavioral frameworks treat habit as routine—repetition for its own sake. Ritual adds meaning, context, and sensory anchoring. The most durable habits carry emotional weight or bodily familiarity.
The transition from routine to ritual is what makes breathing with Ohm self-sustaining. Over repeated sessions, the same sensory pattern—light, sound, and touch—becomes a conditioned signal for restoration.
The nervous system learns to anticipate calm before the first breath begins, a process known as anticipatory regulation or allostatic priming (Sterling, 2012).
At that point, practice no longer feels like a task. The ritual performs itself.
The attention economy has perfected behavioral loops that exploit human wiring:
These loops aren’t inherently harmful; they’re simply misapplied. The same behavioral architecture that keeps people refreshing a feed could be redirected toward behaviors that lower cortisol, slow the breath, or regulate HRV.
The goal isn’t to manipulate behavior but to align design with biology. Calm can be as sticky as distraction when it’s tied to the right feedback loop.
The true metric of a wellness product isn’t engagement time or data points—it’s automaticity, the point at which behavior requires no conscious decision.
Good design doesn’t fight for attention; it fits quietly into daily life.
It doesn’t reward intensity; it rewards consistency.
A well-designed product should be as easy to reach for as a glass of water—something the body does to restore equilibrium without needing permission.
Most technology chases novelty. The next generation should chase endurance.
The challenge isn’t helping people start healthy habits; it’s designing tools that make them a natural part of each day.
People already know how to be healthy. The barrier is friction, not awareness. When design cooperates with physiology—when it engages the body’s own reward circuits instead of competing with them—good habits start to behave like bad ones: automatic, self-reinforcing, and hard to break.
That’s the future of human-centered design: borrowing the behavioral playbook that created addiction, and using it to create balance instead.
Baumel, A., Muench, F., Edan, S., & Kane, J. (2019). Objective user engagement with mental health apps: Systematic search and panel-based usage analysis.Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Eyal, N. (2014). Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Portfolio. Fogg, B.J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design.Proceedings of Persuasive Technology.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world.European Journal of Social Psychology.
Montague, P.R., & Berns, G.S. (2002). Neural economics and the biological substrates of valuation.Neuron.
Porges, S.W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective.Biological Psychology.
Schultz, W. (2016). Dopamine reward prediction-error signalling: A two-component response.Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
Sterling, P. (2012). Allostasis: A model of predictive regulation.Physiology & Behavior.
