A Summary of “How to form Habit forming products” By Nir Eyal

The Hook Model:

There are four main principles to creating Habit forming products.

1. A Trigger: This is the spark plug that generates an action, there are two types of triggers. Internal and external. Habit forming products start by alerting users with external triggers i.e. email, website, link or app icon on the phone which causes them to act.
2. Action: This is the behaviour done in anticipation of reward. There are two types of pulleys that cause the likelihood of an action occurring. The first is the ease of performing and the second is the psychological reward.
3. Variable reward: The hook should create a craving, add variability to the mix to generate intrigue.
4. Investment: Increase odds that the user will make another pass again in the future. The user invests something, time, money any addition for the next user: inviting friends, purchasing virtual assets etc.

Notes on Habits:

1. Users who find value in a product are likely to invite their friends.
2. The Viral Cycle Time is the time it takes to invite another user.
3. Habits most recently acquired are the first to go!
4. Frequent engagement with a product helps create a habit.
5. A company can be create habit forming products through plotting two factors:

• Frequency: how often the behaviour occurs, a behaviour which occurs frequently enough forms a habit. How frequent is frequent enough: this depends on the type of business. However the higher the frequency the better.
• Perceived Utility: how useful and rewarding the utility is in the users mind.

6. A habit is formed when doing a particular function relieves the itch of something which causes pain. i.e the habit of taking a pain killer when you have a headache. Habit forming products create associations in peoples mind. Habits forming products start as vitamins and end up being painkillers.

The Hook Model:

Trigger:

In understanding the Trigger, it is important to note that there are several types of triggers that spark an action. Triggers act as a “call to action” button, in which external triggers tell a user what to do next.

External Triggers:

1. Paid triggers: This is the cost to get a user to use their product or service.Although this works in the short run, often it is unsustainable.
2. Earned triggers: For this, companies must keep their product in the lime light i.e. featured on the app store. Thus has earned the likelihood of being downloaded.
3. Relationship triggers: Often this is for information shared. If users find value in a certain product or service they will share the information, thus making it viral.
4. Own triggers: This is when you consume a piece of real estate in a user environment. i.e this can be in the form of an app icon which prompts engagement until a habit is formed.

Internal Triggers:

Internal triggers tell users what to do next through associations in memory, and thus internal triggers are often in the form of thoughts, and emotions that manifest automatically. Internal triggers are what keep the user hooked in the long term. A product owner must understand and address the pain points to identify and address the triggers and emotions behind the pain points.

1. Negative triggers are strong prompters! They are often the root emotion behind a trigger i.e. the fear of missing out.
2. Positive triggers: positive emotions are also triggers, and satisfy the desire to be entertained.
3. The “Five Whys”. Behind every action. there is a “why”. Going through the “Five Whys” gets to the root emotion behind the trigger. For example: Jean send an email. Why? Because she wants to wants to get the work done. Why? Because she wants to please her boss. Why? So she can get her promotion. Why? So she can have more money. Why? So she can be happy.
4. Understanding which user emotions are tied to internal triggers and what external trigger drives the action is very crucial.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Who is your user?
2. What are they doing before their intended habit?
3. What internal triggers does the user experience most frequently?
4. Complete this sentence: every time the user experiences “internal trigger” he or she does “external trigger”.
5. Refer to the “Five Whys”.
6. Think of a three types of external triggers through tech: email, text and notifications.
7. This of three crazy triggers to spark imagination: carrier pigeons etc. Crazy ideas spur imagination.

Action

In order for the intended user to engage in the action, “action” must be easier than thinking, if more thinking is expected from the user, they are less likely to do it. Whilst doing the action, they must have sufficient motivation, and they must be able to complete the intended action.

3 Simple Steps to creating a truly innovative product:

1. Understand why the product is used
2. Layout steps from the start to the intended action.
3. Start removing unnecessary steps to complete the intended action, and be highly adaptive. Even Evan William’s, states: take a desire, identify how to get to that desire, and use technology to take out steps to achieve that desire.

The ease or difficulty affects likelihood of action occurring. Ability is the capability to do a certain behaviour. It is important to remove any obstacles to the desired behaviour. Start by making it easier to do the action, and then focus on having the motivation to do that action in the first place. Influencing behaviour by reducing the effort, is more effective than influencing the behaviour to do it. For example, previously when signing into apps, users had to fill out large forms to sign up, now they simply sign in via Facebook or Twitter with a couple of taps therefore making it easier.

Perceived Scarcity Demonstrates Value:

When less of an item is available, people think it is of value, therefore they are more likely to purchase.

The Endowed Progress Effect

When you start people off, i.e. Coffee Stamp card, if you give one person a card with 10 slots, but you give them 2 free, they are more likely complete the card. If however you give them a card with 8 slots and you do not give them any stamps for free, they will not complete the entire card.

Facebook and LinkedIn both provide a progress bar to help complete their profile page. This progress bar is already completed a little bit when you start and therefore indicates that users have an endowed progress.

Three Core Motivators:

Actions are based on three core motivators:

1. Seeking pleasure avoid pain
2. Seeking hope avoid fear
3. Seek acceptance instead of rejection

Remember and Share:

1. For any behaviour to occur, a trigger must be present at the same time as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action.
2. Start with a trigger, then increase ability by making action easier to do, then align with the right motivator.
3. Every behaviour is driven by three core motivators: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, seeking hope and avoiding fear, and seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection.4. Ability is influenced by the six factors of time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, and non-routines. Ability is dependent on users and their context at the moment.
4. Ability is influenced by six factors: time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance and non-routineness.

Do This Now

1. Walk through the path your intended user will take, from the time they feel their internal trigger to the point where they receive their expected outcome.
2. How many steps does it take for users to get reward?
3. How this this process compare with the simplicity?
4. How does it compare with competition?
5. Which resources are limiting your users ability to accomplish the tasks that will become habits (six factors mentioned above)
6. Brainstorm three testable ways to make the process easier.

Variable Reward

Without variability we become less excited by the experience. To hold attention, products must have on going novelty. Novelty sparks out interest. Intermittent rewards increase frequency of completing action. Variability increases activity, which increases dopamine. Brains are trained to seek rewards. Facebook is addictive because every time someone logs into the home screen, they don’t know what they will find. The “like” button provides a variable reward. Tribal validation is made through comments and likes! Only by understanding what actually matters to users, can you identify rewards.

With MyFitnessPal, you either comply of quite. It becomes a drag to enter all the information all the time, as sometimes you forget etc. You have to adopt a strict method for it to work, which defeats the objective as users feel they HAVE to do something instead of WANTING to do it.

Fitocracy engages users, when you enter the workouts that you do, other members can comment or congratulate you. Therefore you feel validation from the community for what you are doing. If someone goes on a run, you can congratulate them, ask them questions etc. It creases a unique online community of like minded people that exchange advice, receive praise, share encouragement etc. A study found that social factors were the most likely reason something is recommended, as we all crave social acceptance, and Fitocracy leverages this. Engagement with an online community should be instant otherwise the novelty wears off.

You have to revamp old habits instead of creating new routines. People feel strained by threats to their autonomy, when they have to go out their way to do something. An element of mystery is n important component of continued user interest. Experiences with finite variability become less interesting because they eventually become predictable. Think of the pigeon example: A pigeon jumps on a lever, every time it goes on the level small pellets get released, so this because predictable. Scientists then introduced pigeons getting food at irregular intervals which created mystery and the frequency at which they jumped on the level increased dramatically.

If you play a game, and you go from level to level, this is predictable and you know what to expect. If you play World of Warcraft for example, there are infinite possibilities and therefore this keeps users engaged.

There are three variable reward types: The Tribe, the Hunt and the Self.

Rewards of the Tribe:

Social rewards are driven by our connectedness with other people. Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel attractive, important and included. All Social media provides powerful social rewards on a variable schedule. With every post, a user can gain social validation, and rewards of the tribe, keep users coming back for more. People write questions and do posts in anticipation of rewards from the tribe. You have the opportunity to vote up or down.

Rewards of the Hunt:

Hunters in the olden days users to be persistent when catching animals, often they would run for 8–10 hours before catching the animal. Modern day examples of persistence followed by variable rewards are slot machines. These provide a classic example of where people persist in anticipation of random interviews. Twitter provides a feed mundane information, but people keep scrolling in anticipation of variable rewards ( a post they like ). When people get to the bottom of the page on Pinterest, the post if cut in half, therefore giving a glimpse of what to expect, but not exactly the full picture. To relieve their curiosity, all users have to do is continue scrolling.

Rewards of the Self:

Users can often go through challenging tasks, however if they get rewarded enough, they will continue pursuing these tasks. Gamification has been used with varying success, points, badges, and leaderboards can prove effective, but only if you can relieve the users itch. When there is a mismatch between the customers problem, and the companies assumed solution, no amount of gamification will help spur engagement. Quora found success by connecting the right reward to the intended behaviour of asking and answering questions. Reminding people of their “freedom to chose” provides very effective. By maintaining the users freedom to choose, products can facilitate the adoption of new habits and change behaviour for good.

Do this now:

1. Speak with five of your customers in an open-ended interview to identify what they find enjoyable/encouraging about using your product. Any moments of delight or surprise? Anything satisfying?
2. Review steps your customer takes to use your product or service. What outcome alleviates the users pain. Is the reward fulfilling/leave user wanting more?
3. Brainstorm three ways your product may heighten users search for variable rewards. Rewards of the Tribe: gratification from others. Rewards of the Hunt: material goods, money or info. Rewards of self: mastery, completion, competency, or consistency.

Investment

With Investment, frequency is very important, the second most important aspect is attitude. Little investment such as placing a small sign in an area could lead to commitments. Get people to do smaller tasks first, prior to committing to bigger ones. If people cannot do a task, they will have cognitive dissonance (the Sour grapes example).

Mafia wars used information about Facebook friends. It merged a virtual world with a physical world. People would play against their friends, they don’t like losing to their friends because in their head, they think they are better. they therefore pay money or play a long time. By doing this, they gain a variable reward this validates the idea that they are better than their friends. They then also have cognitive dissonance, but in a positive way. For example, they convince themselves that because they spent time on something, it must be worthwhile and of value, and if its of value, it must be worth spending money on.

Investments are made in anticipation of long term rewards. For example on Twitter, you have the ability to follow people, the more people you follow, the more variable rewards you will see in the future and therefore you invest by tapping follow. After a while, because it has taken some effort to get there, you perceive it must be of value and you commit to it. Every time users add content, they strengthen ties to that service. If they don’t add content, then adding data is also considered as information generated or created by users which is stored value in the form of content. The more people you follow, the better service it provides. To acquire followers, people must be content that people want to see, otherwise they wont build a following.

Investment increases friction. Asking users to do work comes after variable rewards. By asking to do something after a reward, you leverage a central trait of human behaviour!

People take online reputation very seriously, as your online reputation is a form of stored value. People are less likely to maintain their score to remain of high value to achieve the intended behaviour. In the investment phase the Product Designer must consider if the users have sufficient motivation to and the ability to engage in the intended behaviour. If they are not doing what you want, it is because you are asking too must too soon. Progressively stage the investment from the intended user. Start with small chunks, and build up to harder tasks through successfully going through cycles of the hook model.

Applying the Hook

Load the next trigger, you need a hook model to get someone to use the app again. The app any.do syncs with the calendar service, therefore granting any.do access to the users schedule. In doing so, users give the app permission to send notification after the next scheduled meeting ends. This prompts a return to the app. The any.do app anticipates needs.

Tinder: Loads the next trigger with each swipe. The more swipes, the more potential matches are made. Each match sends notification to both interested parties.

Snapchat: Makes returning the message easy, by twice tapping the message received to reply. The self destruct option encourages timely responses. Sending messages back and fourth keeps users hooked.

Pinterest: Users invest every time they pin an image of their own, repin an image, comment etc. The more users invest in a product, the more valuable it becomes and the less people question its use.

Remember and Share

The investment phase concerns the anticipation of rewards in the future. Investments in a product create preferences because of our tendency to overvalue our work. Be consistent with past behaviours to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Investment comes after the variable reward phase, people always perceive their investments to be of value. Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more its used. Investment increased the likelihood of users passing through the hook again.

Do this now:

1. Review your flow, what “bit of work” are your users doing to increase their likelihood of returning?
2. Brainstorm three ways to add small investments into your product to:

• Load the next trigger.
• Store value as data, content, followers, reputation and skill.
• Identify how long it takes for a “loaded trigger” to reengage your users.
• How can you reduce the delay to shorten time spent cycling through the hook.

What are you going to do with this knowledge?

Ask yourself five fundamental questions for building effective hooks:

1) What do users really want? What pain is your product relieving? (internal)

2) What brings users to your service? (external)

3) What it the simplest action users take in anticipation of reward, how can you simplify your product to make this action easier? (action)

4) Are users fulfilled by the reward, yet left wanting more? (variable)

5) What bit of work do users invest in the product to load the next trigger?

Remember: The Fogg Behaviour Model.

For actions to occur, users must receive a trigger and have sufficient motivation and ability to complete it. If any of these elements are missing or inadequate at the moment the trigger action will not occur.

The Bible App: If users fail to engage at first prompt i.e. enter all ur info, they get a second trigger (a red button on the app), if this still fails, by the evening they get a prompt saying why don’t you try something less challenging. Also there is an option to receive things via email. If a few days ago, you get an email prompt, until you reengage with the app.

Members can share information and get community emails which can also serve as a nudge to prompt people to reengage with the app. Placing more interesting sections upfront and saving the boring bits for later also increased completion rate as people see relevant information.

Skipping a day in reading a verse would mean breaking the chain of checked days, employing the endowed progress effect. People do not want to break this chain because they feel they have worked hard to achieve this.

— The End —

All content from this article is from the book: “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal”. I do not own any information. The sole purpose of writing this article was to take notes for personal uses, and apply it where possible. All credit goes to the Nir Eyal for writing a great book. Thank you, I very much enjoyed reading it. You can buy the book here: http://goo.gl/AWO0Zh