Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

While internal triggers are the frequent, everyday itch experienced by users, the right motivators create action by offering the promise of desirable outcomes (i.e., a satisfying scratch).

Denis J. Hauptly deconstructs the process of innovation into its most fundamental steps. First, Hauptly states, 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.

Consequently, any technology or product that significantly reduces the steps to complete a task will enjoy high adoption rates by the people it assists.

as the steps required to get something done (in this case to get online and use the Internet) were removed or improved upon, adoption increased.

“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time … Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

the ease or difficulty of doing a particular action affects the likelihood that a behavior will occur.

ELEMENTS OF SIMPLICITY

Fogg describes six “elements of simplicity”—the factors that influence a task’s difficulty.6 These are: Time—how long it takes to complete an action. Money—the fiscal cost of taking an action. Physical effort—the amount of labor involved in taking the action. Brain cycles—the level of mental effort and focus required to take an action. Social deviance—how accepted the behavior is by others. Non-routine—according to Fogg, “How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.”

There are many counterintuitive and surprising ways companies can boost users’ motivation or increase their ability by understanding heuristics—the mental shortcuts we take to make decisions and form opinions.

four of these brain biases in particular.

In 1975 researchers Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee, and Akanbi Adewole wanted to know how people would value cookies in two identical glass jars.8 One jar held ten cookies while the other contained just two. Which cookies would people value more? Although the cookies and jars were identical, participants valued the ones in the near-empty jar more highly.

The appearance of scarcity affected their perception of value.

Context also shapes perception. In a social experiment, world-class violinist Joshua Bell decided to play a free impromptu concert in a Washington, D.C., subway station.9 Bell regularly sells out venues such as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall for hundreds of dollars per ticket, but when placed in the context of the D.C. subway, his music fell upon deaf ears. Almost nobody knew they were walking past one of the most talented musicians in the world.

Rarely can you walk into a clothing store without seeing signage for “30% off,” “buy one, get one free,” and other sales and deals. In reality these items are often marketed to maximize profits for the business. The same store often has similar but less expensive (yet not discounted) products. I recently visited a store that offered a package of three Jockey brand undershirts at a “buy one, get one half-off” discount for $29.50. After surveying other options I noticed a package of five Fruit of the Loom brand undershirts selling for $34. After doing some quick math I discovered that the undershirts not on sale were actually cheaper per shirt than the discounted brand’s package.

The Endowed Progress Effect

Some of the progress is already done by the company giving the offer

Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with eight squares; the other was given a punch card with ten squares that came with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase eight car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers—those that were given two free punches—had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate. The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal.

Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook utilize this heuristic to encourage people to divulge more information about themselves when completing their online profiles. On LinkedIn every user starts with some semblance of progress (figure 19). The next step is to “Improve Your Profile Strength” by supplying additional information. As users complete each step, the meter incrementally shows the user is advancing. Cleverly, LinkedIn’s completion bar jump-starts the perception of progress and does not include a numeric scale. For the new user, a proper LinkedIn profile does not seem so far away. Yet even the “advanced” user still has additional steps she can take to inch toward the final goal.

there are hundreds of cognitive biases that influence our behaviors; the four discussed here are just a few examples.

to keep users engaged, products need to deliver on their promises.

To form the learned associations we discussed in chapter 2, the trigger phase, users must come to depend on the product as a reliable solution to their problem—the salve for the itch they came to scratch.

The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.

Adding variability increased the frequency of the pigeons’ completing the intended action.

variable rewards come in three types: the tribe, the hunt, and the self (figure 20). Habit-forming products utilize one or more of these variable reward types.

We are a species that depends on one another. Rewards of the tribe, or social rewards, are driven by our connectedness with other people.

people who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behavior are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions. Notably, Bandura also demonstrated that this technique works particularly well when people observe the behavior of people most like themselves or who are slightly more experienced (and therefore, role models).

click of the “Like” button provides a variable reward for the content’s creators.

Where we once hunted for food, today we hunt for other things.

Slot machines provide a classic example of variable rewards of the hunt. Gamblers plunk $1 billion per day into slot machines in American casinos, which is a testament to the machines’ power to compel players.16 By awarding money in random intervals, games of chance entice players with the prospect of a jackpot. Naturally, winning is entirely outside the gambler’s control—yet the pursuit can be intoxicating.

The Twitter timeline, for example, is filled with a mix of both mundane and relevant content. This variety creates an enticingly unpredictable user experience. On occasion a user might find a particularly interesting piece of news, while other times she won’t. To keep hunting for more information, all that is needed is a flick of the finger or scroll of a mouse. Users scroll and scroll and scroll to search for variable rewards in the form of relevant tweets

Although puzzles offer no prize other than the satisfaction of completion, for some the painstaking search for the right pieces can be a wonderfully mesmerizing struggle.

The rewards of the self are fueled by “intrinsic motivation” as highlighted by the work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Their self-determination theory espouses that people desire, among other things, to gain a sense of competency. Adding an element of mystery to this goal makes the pursuit all the more enticing.

Have you ever caught yourself checking your e-mail for no particular reason? Perhaps you unconsciously decided to open it to see what messages might be waiting for you. For many, the number of unread messages represents a sort of goal to be completed.

Yet to feel rewarded, the user must have a sense of accomplishment. Mailbox, an e-mail application acquired by Dropbox in 2013 for a rumored $100 million, aims to solve the frustration of fighting what feels like a losing in-box battle.20 Mailbox cleverly segments e-mails into sorted folders to increase the frequency of users achieving “inbox zero”—a near-mystical state of having no unread e-mails (figure 26). Of course, some of the folder sorting is done through digital sleight-of-hand by pushing some low priority e-mails out of sight, then having them reappear at a later date. However, by giving users the sense that they are processing their in-box more efficiently, Mailbox delivers something other e-mail clients do not—a feeling of completion and mastery.

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, in contrast to traditional methods of learning to code by writing whole programs. At Codecademy users can enter a single correct function and the code works or doesn’t, providing instant feedback.

Quora demonstrated that social rewards and the variable reinforcement of recognition from peers proved to be much more frequent and salient motivators. Quora instituted an upvoting system that reports user satisfaction with answers and provides a steady stream of social feedback. Quora’s social rewards have proven more attractive than Mahalo’s monetary rewards.

Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behavior.

gamification—defined as the use of gamelike elements in nongame environments—has been used with varying success. Points, badges, and leaderboards can prove effective, but only if they scratch the user’s itch. When there is a mismatch between the customer’s problem and the company’s assumed solution, no amount of gamification will help spur engagement. Likewise, if the user has no ongoing itch at all—say, no need to return repeatedly to a site that lacks any value beyond the initial visit—gamification will fail because of a lack of inherent interest in the product or service offered. In other words, gamification is not a “one size fits all” solution for driving user engagement.

The magic words the researchers discovered? The phrase “But you are free to accept or refuse.”

The “but you are free” technique demonstrates how we are more likely to be persuaded to give when our ability to choose is reaffirmed.

Unfortunately, too many companies build their products betting users will do what they make them do instead of letting them do what they want to do.

Companies that successfully change behaviors present users with an implicit choice between their old way of doing things and a new, more convenient way to fulfill existing needs.

People must want to use the service, not feel they have to.

Beware of Finite Variability

Businesses with finite variability are not inferior per se; they just operate under different constraints. They must constantly churn out new content and experiences to cater to their consumers’ insatiable desire for novelty.

This is in contrast with companies making products exhibiting infinite variability—experiences that maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use. For example, games played to completion offer finite variability, while those played with other people have higher degrees of infinite variability because the players themselves alter the gameplay throughout.

World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, still captures the attention of more than 10 million active users eight years after its release.31 FarmVille is played mostly in solitude, but World of Warcraft is frequently played with teams; it is the hard-to-predict behavior of other people that keeps the game interesting.

Sites like Dribbble, a platform for designers and artists to showcase their work, exemplify the longer-lasting engagement that comes from infinite variability. On the site contributors share their designs in search of feedback from other artists. As new trends and design patterns change, so do Dribbble’s pages. The variety of what Dribbble users can create is limitless, and the constantly changing site always offers new surprises.

Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter all leverage user-generated content to provide visitors with a never-ending stream of newness.

rewards of the tribe—gratification from others. rewards of the hunt—material goods, money, or information. rewards of the self—mastery, completion, competency, or consistency.

Before users create the mental associations that activate their automatic behaviors, they must first invest in the product.