Hooked-By Nir Eyal
Here are my thoughts, favorite quotes and ideas from this bestseller which has been recommended reading for everyone who builds habit-forming products. I also recommend it to all those who are trying to understand why they are hooked on to their smartphones.
About the Author
Nir Eyal is a serial entrepreneur and lecturer who teaches companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Stanford University about the science of habit formation. He is best known for writing Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. There he speaks about how products are designed that can “hook” users in order to go out of their way to keep using them on a daily basis without requiring user input or significant time or effort.
Why am I reading this book?
I read this because I am passionate about building human-centric products and developing a deeper understanding of how psychology interacts with design.
About the book:
The book gives us an insight into how habits are formed and how can we utilize that behavior to build habit forming products .
“Users who continually find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it.”
Bird’s Eye View
The book explains how habits are formed and delves deeper into how product building organizations and individuals manipulate the human psyche by using triggers, actions, variable rewards and investments.
Who should Read?
Product Managers
Product Engineers, Product Implementation Engineers, Business Analysts
People interested in building B2C products
People curious about the psychology behind building addictive products.
Key Takeaways
For a product to be habit-forming, it needs to occur with frequency and enough perceived utility that it can become a part of the habit zone.
Triggers are both internal and external. Internal triggers are harder to cultivate but increase customer lifetime value exponentially.
Actions performed with enough frequency and enough perceived utility become habits.
Its the variability of the reward that keeps the user’s intrigue piqued and keeps them coming for more.
Investment in an app keeps the user coming back for more. Investments can be monetary and non-monetary( Time, User data etc.).
“79 percent of smartphone owners check their device within 15 minutes of waking up every morning.”
Book Summary
The book talks about first-to-mind solutions. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with more and more apps and websites, it isn’t always the best solution that wins, it is usually the solution that comes first to your mind. This happens when an app or a website become your default solution to a need(both actual and perceived) For e.g. Amazon for shopping.
The book also talks about how actions turn into habits when they occur with enough frequency and enough perceived utility to enter the habitzone.
The Habit Zone: The zone where any action turns into a habit when performed with enough frequency and enough perceived utility,
The book then goes into detail about The Hook Model and what makes a solution a habit.
The Hook Model: Shows the different factors that affect user behaviour.
Trigger: The impetus that makes the user visit an app/website/product. They can be both external (types of external triggers include-Paid, Relationship based, Earned and Owned) and internal. Internal triggers are usually built as a response to an emotional need or a user habit. For eg. Checking Instagram to alleviate boredom.
Action: They are performed in response to an external or internal trigger and overtime can turn into habits.
Variable reward: The rewards can typically be categorized into three types mainly, rewards of the tribe, rewards of the hunt, rewards of the self. The reward one gets by using a product in various forms including but not limited to social validation, new discovery, increased competency/mastery, arrest the users curiosity and therefore keep them coming back for more.
Investment: Investment by the user in the form of their time, their data, their community keep the users invested in the product for long and lead to further triggers for the users and their community.
Thus, the cycle continues and keeps us truly and helplessly Hooked.
