Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

To ameliorate the sensation of uncertainty, Google is just a click away. E-mail, 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 our existence) by checking to see if someone needs us, to providing an escape from life’s more mundane moments. Once we’re hooked, using these products does not always require an explicit call to action. Instead, they rely upon our automatic responses to feelings that precipitate the desired behavior. Products that attach to these internal triggers provide users with quick relief. Once a technology has created an association in users’ minds that the product is the solution of choice, they return on their own, no longer needing prompts from external triggers. In the case of internal triggers, the information about what to do next is encoded as a learned association in the user’s memory. The association between an internal trigger and your product, however, is not formed overnight. It can take weeks or months of frequent usage for internal triggers to latch onto cues. New habits are sparked by external triggers, but associations with internal triggers are what keeps users hooked. As Yin said, “I just use it whenever I see something cool.” By thoughtfully moving users from external to internal triggers, Instagram designed a persistent routine in people’s lives.