Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal « the BPM freak !!

“Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal” via Audible

In summary, Nir interestingly calls out the key traits of building products that improve usability, adoption or simply put have the users hooked or addicted to the app/product that is developed.

Some key takeaways:
There is a 4-step approach that market leading products use to influence user behavior which is referred to as the “Hook-Model” i.e
️Trigger: something that initiates or starts a behavior
External Trigger (what gets the user to the product? e.g. email, ad or call)
Internal Trigger (what does the user really want & what made him visit again? e.g. opening FB/Twitter)

️Action: something that the user does to earn a reward & this has to be the very simple & easy step with out much thinking associated with it. Anything that gets done with a little or no conscious thought becomes a part of the habit. The behavior model by B.J.Fogg states that:
Behavior = Motivation*Ability*Trigger
Motivation: the urge of the user to act upon a scenario
Ability: the ease of taking an action e.g. for viewing a link/video I do not have to enter a list of 10+ fields which adds to friction, frustration & hence failure to engage the user. It should be quick & intuitive
Triggers: a point to activate the user behavior or interest

️Variable Rewards: reward is what makes the user keep using the product or visiting the app over & over again & the psychological study indicates that if constant or consistent rewards are given to users, the interest of the user declines over time because what drives the user is the anticipation of the reward & not the reward itself e.g. if we get the same offer from the Bank everytime we tend to ignore it.

️Investment: It is the time & effort put by the user to create value for themselves. “The more users invest time & effort into a product or service, the more they value it. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that our labor leads to love”. If we put blood, sweat & tears in building a product we overvalue the product than its actual value ‘coz of investment done.

”IKEA-EFFECT” is a great business-model wherein, the company ensures the users put time & effort to build their own furniture themselves & love the art of building & hence the product

As some habits or addictions created can be for good or bad – Nir also talks about the morality of manipulation if done by the makers.

One thing that I loved about this book was it kept the listener engaged & engrossed throughout, with tons of real-time examples & scenarios making it more relatable than preaching.

A lot of inferences that can be drawn from the book to the way we design & build apps, products or solutions. Usability, Variability, Flexibility, along with engaging a user to invest/act in a simplistic model forms the bedrock for any product to scale or excel or improve the experience index

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