+40%
More learners on a streak.
Duolingo:Streak redesign.
Bought by 1.8k+
Is your app emotionally charged? These cards show you how to add the emotional layer that makes users stick.
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Aidan, Founder Purchased playbook
Pontus, Head of Design Purchased playbook
Rico, Founder Purchased playbook
Christine, UX Lead Purchased playbook
Jared, Product Manager Purchased playbook
Stacks & cards
Perceived Effort Delay
When results take a moment, they feel considered. Pinterest’s
feed-tuning pause plays this card beautifully.
Intent Mirroring
Hearing our own intent reflected back makes a moment land. Amazon Music’s
made-for-you moments play this card quietly well.
Commitment
Declaring a goal makes us weirdly loyal to it. Duolingo’s
daily goal picker plays this card perfectly.
Variable Reward
Discovering new rewards is what keeps us coming for more. Bumble’s
reveal admirer uses this card all too well.
Is this for me
Anyone building experiences in the consumer app space. The emotional layer is the missing ingredient in functional apps.
Trusted by founders & product teams from the world's top companies
Plain English
From stuck feature to shipped result, in three steps.
Pick a stack by priority. Onboarding, activation, retention, monetisation and more.
Pull a card. Each one is a proven emotionally charged tactic. Cards are the building blocks for each stack.
Ship it this week. Practical, easy to implement. Each card has custom pairings so the deck adapts to any app.
See where you can start today Get started
Move the metrics
+40%
More learners on a streak.
Duolingo:Streak redesign. Build the same in your app:
+83%
Free to paid conversions.
Busuu:Content locking. Build the same in your app:
+20%
Visitors creating accounts.
Pinterest:Explore before signup. Build the same in your app:
Results curated by abtest.design
“We used many of these product strategy cards and scaled our start up to $100K mrr in a few months.”
Pontus WelgrafHead of Design, Roots“I'm from the info world, not SaaS so having these cards has helped me reach results a lot faster without the trial and error I would have learnt the hard way.”
Zac HensenFounder, Productised Coach“Super impressive level of detail and instantly usable. The playbook is something I keep referencing to.”
Rico BeranFounder, Uptown StudioPlaybook + AI agents
Armed with the playbook, your agent designs the aha moment, anticipates friction, builds sharing loops in, and turns users into advocates.
Users sign up, poke around, then leave before the aha moment.
Product-Design-Playbook.pdf
Claude
Codex
Cursor
Replit
“I exported all of the playbook to seed it… It's been working insanely well, shipping extremely fast and getting many more users much faster now”
The Figma swipe file
The playbook also comes as a Figma swipe file: all 175+ cards laid out at a bird’s-eye view, each backed by real screens from the best apps in the market. Get their strategy & see their execution
The playbook
Each tactic covers what to do, why it works, and when to use it
Use to build converting features in any app at any stage
Onboarding, activation, retention, monetisation, +8 more stacks
Download it, open it, and start using it in minutes
Secure Stripe payment
One time payment. No subscription
There's so much advanced product insight. It's quickly obvious that this is experienced-level knowledge. Kinda don't want others to find it.
Refreshing using a resource that is this actually practical and not full of nothing
The way the cards connect together is probably my favourite part. I started spotting quick wins in my own app really quickly. It's been great!
I pull this out at the start of every new project engagement. It's helped me think beyond screens and that's helped me charge more for my work
We used the onboarding plays to redesign our first-run experience. Downloads-to-activation jumped from 68% to 87% in a couple of weeks
Most design resources are written around visuals. This one actually ties in metrics and outcomes which is what I need when I'm selling decisions upward.
Super easy to skim, but there's a surprising amount of depth once you slow down and connect the ideas
Apps charged with emotions feel different. They anticipate, solve and reward action that makes interaction with them a pleasure.
Emotional intelligence is the edge in consumer apps. The best products don't just work; they guide emotions, shape habits, and build momentum by design.
You've felt it: Duolingo makes you feel productive, TikTok keeps you in flow, Headspace helps you exhale. That's not luck, it's engineered.
I've spent the last seven years shaping product experiences. Along the way, I realised that triggering emotions is what made apps land.
This playbook shows you how.
Buy the playbook
Founders, developers, product managers, and marketers. They all use the playbook to weave in the emotional triggers that make up winning app experiences.
Plays: individual tactics. There are 33 of them, and each play is five cards: the tactic card, a Make It Yours prompt card, and three real example cards.
Stacks: groups of plays that focus on a single area like onboarding, activation, or retention.
There are 12 stacks in total:
It's an active working tool to be shuffled, combined and remixed. There isn't a linear path to follow.
The playbook is a digital download only.
No. You don't need to know how to design visually. Each of the 33 tactic cards comes with 3 sourced examples from real apps, 99 visual examples in total, showing you exactly how the strategy looks when it's done well.
Yes. The emotional layer applies to all apps, web or mobile. The “Make it Yours” cards help you tailor to your specific scenario.
Both. Before launch, it helps you build the right flows from day one so you're not patching problems later. After launch, it helps you diagnose what's not working and fix it with something proven instead of guessing.
Ask your own question
Thinking…
Find your stack + unlock a discount?
What are you building?
What’s the biggest thing in your way right now?
Understanding your answers…
Your starting stack:
The Retention stack
Start with the stack that’s designed to help you keep users coming back.
No single stack covers that. Take the whole playbook, 10% off.
CONSUMER10
