Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover
Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occurring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do
What distinguishes the Hook Model from a plain vanilla feedback loop is the hook’s ability to create a craving.
Variable rewards are one of the most powerful tools companies implement to hook users;
dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward.
Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a focused state, which suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and
exciting juxtaposition of relevant and irrelevant,sets her brain’s dopamine system aflutter with the promise of reward.
The last phase of the Hook Model is where the user does a bit of work. The investment phase increases the odds that the user will make another pass through the hook cycle in the future. The investment occurs when the user puts something into the product of service such as time, data, effort, social capital, or money.
Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all investments users make to improve their experience.
Tthis book teaches innovators how to build products to help people do the things they already want to do but, for lack of a solution, don’t do.
Habits form when the brain takes a shortcut and stops actively deliberating over what to do next.[xix] The brain quickly learns to codify behaviors that provide a solution to whatever situation it encounters.
Once the compulsion to play is in place and the desire to progress in the game increases, converting users into paying customers is much easier.
“Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”
[Products that require]a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using
the new product are clear and substantial.
Non-transferrable value created and stored inside these services discourages users from leaving.
For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.
The complexity of the behavior and how important the habit was to the person greatly affected how quickly the routine was formed.
Higher frequency is better.
“Are you building a vitamin or painkiller?” is a common, almost clichéd question many investors ask
Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain and often have quantifiable markets.
Vitamins do not necessarily solve an obvious pain-point. Instead they appeal to users’ emotional rather than functional needs.
A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain.
Addictions are persistent, compulsive dependencies on a behavior or substance.
The hooked model is trigger, action, variable reward, and investment.
[Provide] explicit instructions about what action to take. Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse,
Reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring unconsciously.
Most [] companies generally use paid triggers to acquire new users and then leverage other triggers to bring them back.
Earned triggers: investment in the form of time spent on public and media relations.
Awareness generated by earned triggers can be short-lived.
One person telling others about a product or service can be a highly effective external trigger for action.
[Another is ] an engaged user base that is enthusiastic about sharing
Owned triggers consume a piece of real-estate in the user’s environment.
[It is] up to the user to opt into allowing these triggers to appear.
Without owned triggers and users’ tacit permission to enter their attentional space, it is difficult to cue users frequently enough to change their behavior.
The ultimate goal of all external triggers is to propel users into and through the Hook Model so that, after successive cycles, they do not need further prompting from external triggers.
When a product becomes tightly coupled with a thought, an emotion, or a pre-existing routine, it leverages an internal trigger.
Connecting internal triggers with a product is the brass ring of consumer technology.
Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers and greatly influence our daily routines.
Positive emotions can also serve as internal triggers, and may even be triggered themselves by a need to satisfy something that is bothering
Email, perhaps the mother of all habit-forming technology, is a go-to solution for many of our daily agitations, from validating our importance (or even, simply our existence) by checking to see if someone needs us,
Why do people really send SMS messages? Why do they take photos? What role does watching television or sports play in their lives? Ask yourself what pain these habits solve and what the user might be feeling right before one of these actions.
What would your user want to achieve by using your solution?
[If] you want to build a product that is relevant to folks, you need to put yourself in their shoes and you need to write a story from their side.
Dorsey believes a clear description of users — their desires, emotions, the context with which they use the product — is paramount to building the right solution. In addition to Dorsey's user narratives, tools like customer development,[li] usability studies, and empathy maps[lii] are examples of methods for learning about potential users.
One method is to try asking the question "why" as many times as it takes to get to an emotion. Usually this will happen by the fifth “why.”
To initiate action, doing must be easier than thinking.
First, Hauptly says, understand the reason people use a product or service. Next, lay out the steps the customer must take to get the job done. Finally, once the series of tasks from intention to outcome is understood, simply start removing steps until you reach the simplest possible process.
Making a given action easier to accomplish spurs each successive phase
For companies building technology solutions, the greatest return on investment will generally come from increasing a product’s ease-of-use.
Without variability, we are like children in that once we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited by the experience.
Products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.
hTe need to feel social connectedness shapes our values and drives much of how we spend our time.
People who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behavior are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions.
Works particularly well when people observe the behavior of people most like themselves,
Satisfaction in contributing to a community they care about;
Virtual kudos encouraged positive behavior
Leveling up, unlocking special powers, and other game mechanics fulfill a player's desire for competency by showing progression and completion.
Search for mastery, completion, and
Competence moves users to habitual, sometimes mindless, actions.
Codecademy seeks to make learning to write code more fun and rewarding. The site offers step-by-step instructions for building a web app, animation, and even a browser-based game. The interactive lessons deliver immediate feedback,
Quora instituted an upvoting system that reports user satisfaction with answers and provides a steady stream of social feedback.
Gamification will fail because of a lack of inherent interest in the product or service offered.
The magic words
The phrase, “but you are free to accept or refuse.”
[We] more likely to be persuaded when our ability to choose is reaffirmed.
“reactance,” [is] the hair-trigger response to threats to your autonomy.
To change behavior, products must ensure the users feel in control.
[T]he only way to know how Walter [the hero] gets out of the mess he is in at the end of the latest episode is to watch the next episode.
An element of mystery is an important component of continued user interest.
The most habit-forming products and services utilize one or more of the three variable rewards types of tribe, hunt and self.
Frequency of a new behavior is a leading factor in forming a new habit.
The second most important factor in habit formation is a change in the participant’s attitude about the behavior.
It must occur with significant frequency and perceived utility.
[E}scalation of commitment: The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it. Labor leads to love.
The more effort we put into something, the more likely we are to value it. We are more likely to be consistent with our past behaviors. And finally, we change our preferences to avoid cognitive dissonance.
The last step of the Hook Model is the Investment Phase, the point at which users are asked to do a bit of work. Here, users are prompted to put something of value into the system, which increases the likelihood of them using the product and of successive passes through the hook cycle.
