# Hooked - Nir Eyal Created: 2022_02_27 22:12 Tags: [[Book]] [[Psychology]] [[Business]] Hooks are a series of experiences that can together modify user behavior and encourage formation of new habits. - As we will see, greater accessibility, more data and improved speed of delivery have increased the likelihood of hooks being employed to drive habit formation in our times. - The hooks employed by companies essentially follow a four-phase process called the [[Hook Model]]. Successful products go through multiple cycles of these four phases to reach a refined stage where users keep coming back for more on their own, without any need for aggressive marketing by the company. #### Triggers ##### External Triggers These are bits of information from users’ surroundings that prompt them to perform an action. Types include: - **Paid triggers** - Channels like advertising that capture attention, but are too expensive for the long run - **Earned triggers** - Continued media presence, like viral video and press mentions, which can be difficult to sustain for any product - **Relationship triggers** - Come from engaged users who enthusiastically share information with other potential users - **Owned triggers** - Most useful, as these employ tacit permission from users to send triggers like app updates and periodic notifications into their personal space ##### Internal Triggers For a product to truly become a habit, its triggers need to move from the external forms to the internal. - Internal triggers are driven by users’ emotions and associations stored in their memory. - Trying to rid oneself of negative emotions like boredom and loneliness are powerful triggers for using a particular product. - As a product relieves these negative emotions repeatedly, our mind subconsciously begins to associate it with this relief. - This gradually strengthens the bond with a product, resulting in the formation of a habit, e.g. our reliance on Facebook or Twitter for instant social connection. - Designing a habit-forming product requires an understanding of the emotions that are tied to these internal triggers, as well as knowledge of how external triggers can be used effectively to urge a user to perform a certain action. #### Action ##### What motivates people There are three Core Motivators that drive behavior in most humans: - Desire for pleasure and/or avoidance of pain - use of scantily clad models in print and TV ads acts as a motivator based on pleasure for certain demographics like teenage boys - Desire for hope and/or avoidance of fear - Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign used the plank of hope to great success - Desire for social acceptance and/or avoidance of rejection - showing friends shown cheering for a sports team in a Budweiser ad makes people identify the product with getting together with friends to watch a game ##### What factors limit ability Even when there is a successful trigger and a compelling enough motivation, a person needs to be able to perform an action. The easier it is to perform it, the greater is the likelihood of it becoming a habit, e.g. the boom in blogging in the 2000s after Blogger made it possible to open a blogging account within minutes or the ease of taking photos with an iPhone. There are six elements of simplicity that have an effect on the ease-of-use of a product: - The time it takes to use it - The money it costs - The degree of physical effort involved - The level of mental labor needed - The product’s social acceptability - The degree to which it matches or disrupts current routines The lower the time, money, physical effort or mental labor involved, or the more socially acceptable it is, or the least deviation it requires from a user’s existing routine, the easier it is for him to perform an action. Consequently, the greater is the likelihood of the product becoming a habit. ##### How to increase motivation and ability Between motivation and ability, it is easier to target the latter. Design your products such that it reduces the effort involved for the user, instead of trying to build motivation levels. Both motivation and ability can also be increased using counter-intuitive methods called heuristics. These are mental shortcuts that all of us employ to make quick decisions. Examples include: - The scarcity effect – the scarcer a product is, the higher is its perceived value, e.g. the ‘limited stock’ tag on Amazon products ends up increasing sales for those products - The framing effect – context can alter the desirability of a product, e.g. the same wine is reported to be tastier if the price is increased - The anchoring effect – one aspect of a product is given undue importance over other features, e.g. people end up buying more products of a brand that has a discount sticker on it, even if its quality and the effective cost might be no different than other competing products in the vicinity - The endowed progress effect – in case of reward programs, the closer users feel they are to the goal the more motivated they become, e.g. the ‘Improve Your Profile Strength’ step in LinkedIn has a completion bar that starts off all users with part of the bar already filled, strengthening their belief that a full profile is not far away. #### Reward Variable rewards, and not just any rewards, make users come back to a product again and again by reinforcing the motivation. Finite variability can become boring after a while, while infinite variability sustains user interest. Thus, variable rewards should not only satisfy one or more user needs, but also keep them interested in engaging again (and again) with the product. There are three types of variable rewards: - Rewards of the tribe – those that satisfy our social needs by making us feel more important and accepted, e.g. Likes, shares and comments on Facebook - Rewards of the hunt – those that satisfy our basic survival instincts by helping us acquire things we consider important, like cash and information, e.g. the mix of mundane and relevant content on Twitter entices users to keep looking for more - Rewards of the self – those that help us in self-determination by providing a sense of accomplishment, e.g. apps like Mailbox that segment emails into neat folders, helping achieve a state of ‘inbox zero’, giving a sense of completion and mastery But gamification, or the introduction of rewards, cannot be used blindly to drive user engagement. It is extremely important for product designers to figure out the kind of reward that will motivate their intended users, e.g. Mahalo, a Q&A forum gave monetary rewards to answerers, but bombed, while Quora, a similar service, only provides upvotes, and is very successful. It is also important to provide users with a sense of autonomy or choice – a reward when they feel constrained might not work. If they feel that they are being forced to adapt a certain behavior, they can rebel – a phenomenon known as reactance. ## References - [[B.J. Fogg Behavior Model]] - [[zettels/Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman]] - [[Nudge - Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein]]