Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

the nucleus accumbens.1 The mice quickly became hooked on the sensation.

The brains pleasure center

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.

Researchers believe laughter may in fact be a release valve when we experience the discomfort and excitement of uncertainty, but without fear of harm.3

To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.

Novelty

The quality of being new

the need to feel social connectedness shapes our values and drives much of how we spend our time.

With every post, tweet, or pin, users anticipate social validation.

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.

Amazing

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

Rewards must fit into the narrative of why the product is used and align with the user’s internal triggers and motivations. They must ultimately improve the user’s life.

The phrase “But you are free to accept or refuse.”

The researchers believe the phrase “But you are free” disarms our instinctive rejection of being told what to do.

Adopting a weird new behavior—calorie tracking, in my case—felt like something I had to do, not something I wanted to do. My only options were to comply or quit; I chose the latter.

social factors were the most important reasons people used the service and recommended it to others.

As we step into the character’s shoes we experience his or her motivations—including the search for rewards of the tribe, the hunt, and the self. We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us.

Experiences with finite variability become less engaging because they eventually become predictable.

They must constantly churn out new content and experiences to cater to their consumers’ insatiable desire for novelty.

For companies like Google and Uber, adding more variability to an inherently variable user experience makes no sense. Can you imagine what would happen if your Uber driver decided to take you for a spin around the block just for fun?

Hahaha its so fuhn

the job of companies operating in conditions of inherent variability is to give users what they desperately crave in conditions of low control—a sense of agency.

rewards of the tribe—gratification from others. 2. rewards of the hunt—material goods, money, or information. 3. rewards of the self—mastery, completion, competency, or consistency.

round. In this chapter we have learned how an investment in the product serves as the string that pulls the user back. To do this, the habit-forming technology increases the value of the product with each pass through the Hook. Through successive cycles of the Hooked Model, users increase their affinity for the experience. They increasingly come to rely on the product as the solution to their problems until finally, the new habit—and routine—is formed.

dissonance.

Lack of agreement or hamony

What do users really want? What pain is your product relieving? (Internal trigger) What brings users to your service? (External trigger) What is the simplest action users take in anticipation of reward, and how can you simplify your product to make this action easier? (Action) Are users fulfilled by the reward yet left wanting more? (Variable reward) What “bit of work” do users invest in your product? Does it load the next trigger and store value to improve the product with use? (Investment)

Hooked model

nefarious

Wicked or criminal

Ubiquitous

PResent appearing everywhere

To use the Manipulation Matrix (figure 33), the maker needs to ask two questions. First, “Would I use the product myself?” and second, “Will the product help users materially improve their lives?”

The role of facilitator fulfills the moral obligation for entrepreneurs building a product they will themselves use and that they believe materially improves the lives of others. As long as they have procedures in place to assist those who form unhealthy addictions, the designer can act with a clean conscience.

Fitness apps, charity Web sites, and products that claim to suddenly turn hard work into fun often fall into this quadrant.

Good.empire

Creating a product that the designer does not believe improves users’ lives and that he himself would not use is called exploitation.

the app uses the principle that by making an intended action easier to do, people will do it more often.

The Hooked Model can be a helpful tool for filtering out bad ideas with low habit potential as well as a framework for identifying room for improvement in existing products.

the goal of finding the Habit Path is to determine which of these steps is critical for creating devoted users so that you can modify the experience to encourage this behavior.

the fact that the technology is at first used only by a small population often deceives observers into dismissing the product’s true potential.

nascent

Just.coming into existence

Wherever new technologies suddenly make a behavior easier, new possibilities are born.

each case, a new interface made an action easier and uncovered surprising truths about user behaviors.