Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners check their device within fifteen minutes of waking up every morning.

Cognitive psychologists define habits as “automatic behaviors triggered by situational cues”: things we do with little or no conscious thought.

Forming habits is imperative for the survival of many products.

In order to win the loyalty of their users and create a product that’s regularly used, companies must learn not only what compels users to click but also what makes them tick.

The first-to-mind solution wins.

Today, small start-up teams can profoundly change behavior by guiding users through a series of experiences I call hooks. The more often users run through these hooks, the more likely they are to form habits.

Most important, could the same forces that made these experiences so compelling also be used to build products to improve people’s lives?

the science of influencing human behavior.

the Hook Model: a four-phase process companies use to forms habits.

Hooks can be found in virtually any experience that burrows into our minds (and often our wallets).

1. Trigger A trigger is the actuator of behavior—the

Triggers come in two types: external and internal.

By cycling through successive hooks, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which attach to existing behaviors and emotions.

2. Action Following the trigger comes the action: the behavior done in anticipation of a reward.

draws upon the art and science of usability design to reveal how products drive specific user actions. 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 it.10

3. Variable Reward 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;

Research shows that levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward.

4. Investment The last phase of the Hook Model is where the user does a bit of work. The investment phase increases the odds

The investment occurs when the user puts something into the product of service such as time, data, effort, social capital, or money.

this 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.

the trinity of access, data, and speed presents unprecedented opportunities to create positive habits.

When harnessed correctly, technology can enhance lives through healthful behaviors that improve our relationships, make us smarter, and increase productivity.

Businesses that create customer habits gain a significant competitive advantage.

The Hook Model describes an experience designed to connect the user’s problem to a solution frequently enough to form a habit.

the nature of ingrained habits—behaviors done with little or no conscious thought—which, by some estimates, guide nearly half of our daily actions.

Habits are one of the ways the brain learns complex behaviors.

habits give us the ability to focus our attention on other things by storing automatic responses in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain associated with involuntary actions.

Habits form when the brain takes a shortcut and stops actively deliberating over what to do next.

when the behavior occurs for no conscious purpose—simply as an automatic response to a cue—the habit is in control.

In this book I refer to products in the context of businesses that require ongoing, unprompted user engagement and therefore need to build user habits. I

Habit formation is good for business in several ways.

Increasing Customer Lifetime Value

Providing Pricing Flexibility

Supercharging Growth

Users who continuously find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about

User habits are a competitive advantage. Products that change customer routines are less susceptible to attacks from other companies.

old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines.

users also increase their dependency on habit-forming products by storing value in them—further

behaviors are LIFO—“last in, first out.” In other words, the habits you’ve most recently acquired are also the ones most likely to go soonest.

The enemy of forming new habits is past behaviors, and research suggests that old habits die hard.

For new behaviors to really take hold, they must occur often.

For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.

consumers’ preference for an online retailer increases when they are offered competitive price information.

A company can begin to determine its product’s habit-forming potential by plotting two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (how useful and rewarding the behavior is in the user’s mind over alternative solutions).

Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain, and often have quantifiable markets.

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain.

In reality, the experience we are talking about is more similar to an itch, a feeling that manifests within the mind and causes discomfort until it is satisfied.

Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are two key motivators in all species.

habits are not the same things as addictions. The latter word means persistent, compulsive dependencies on a behavior or substance.