You Don’t Always Want What You Want
The secret to great experiences is not always winning
I’m a huge fan of Nir Eyal’s Hooked which takes an in-depth look into the 4 stages of product experience that makes users crave more. I was recently re-reading some sections and it hit me that each component reflects the experience of our cave-dwelling ancestors. What all of it boils down to is a sense of want. I’m not saying that this is a new concept or that I’ve figured something out that you haven’t, I just want to show the benefits of viewing our products from the Paleo perspective.
Triggers
Internal Trigger: What does a user really want? If they’re lonely they’ll go to Facebook. Bored, maybe Youtube. Hungry, Grubhub. When you want something, you want to scratch that itch as quickly as possible. With our 24/7 access to the internet these itches are being scratched faster than ever but the biggest companies are the ones who have helped you scratch it enough times that you find yourself clicking on their icon almost subconsiously. For our ancestors, this was very much the same experience. If they knew a quick way to get food, they’d go there first. This is just as much about convenience as it is about reward. The quicker a product helps you get what you want, the more you’ll rely on it and ignore other options.
External Trigger: Buzzzzzz. Another red dot pops up on your screen and an alert lets you know your mom tagged you in yet another picture that you’re propably not even in. External triggers these days often come in the form of notifications but plenty of real-world events still affect our wants. Your friend eating that juicy burger might trigger hunger, or your teacher putting on yet another powerpoint might trigger boredom. Whatever the external trigger is, it’s going to make you want to take action. The more external triggers that your product can be connected to, the more important it becomes. If there’s one thing to take away from this post it’s that your experience must solve a problem. It might be the prettiest, simplest, fastest product in the world but if the experience doesn’t solve a users needs then you’re nothing but a pretty book with no thesis. These days we have literally thousands of options for solving our needs. Google isn’t the only search engine and Facebook isn’t the only social network. In the past, our ancestors didn’t have to deal with this paradox of choice nearly as much. They would find an answer to their needs and until something exponentially better came along, they’d just stick with the option that worked the first time. That should tell you something — be exponentially better than the other options to make these triggers lead the user to your product. This shouldn’t be taken as a “cover everything to win” idea. Actually, you’re way better off being exceptional at one thing then being average at a bunch of things.
Action
If I haven’t said it enough, convenience is the most important component when designing user experiences. This isn’t to say it’s the only component but when somebody wants something, they don’t want to go through an ordeal to get it if they don’t have to. When it comes to digital products, this action is usually as simple as logging in. For that reason, you better make it damn simple to do so. And once the user is logged in, you gotta give them what they’re looking for STAT. Take away the fluff — anything that doesn’t let the user move closer towards their goals doesn’t need to be there. You can think of all of our ancestral implications pretty easily.
Variable Reward
The hook model is indivisable — each component plays off of the others. While you can’t successfully drive a user to come back without each of these components, I believe that variable rewards are the creme de la creme of addictive products. Here’s a breakdown of the rewards straight from Nir Eyal’s blog:
REWARDS OF THE TRIBE
We are a species that depends on each other. We have specially-adapted neurons to help us feel what others feel, which provides evidence that we survive through our empathy for one another. We’re meant to be part of a tribe so our brains seek out rewards that make us feel accepted, important, attractive, and included.
It’s no wonder that the use of social media has exploded over the past few years. Facebook and Twitter, to name just two of the most popular examples, provide well over a billion people with powerful social rewards on a variable schedule. With each tweet and post, users wonder how much social validation they’ll receive. We even measure our clout with Klout to put a number on our level of influence.
REWARDS OF THE HUNT
But as sociable as we are, our individual need for sustenance is even more crucial. The need to acquire physical things, such as food and supplies, is part of the brain’s operating system and we clearly wouldn’t have survived the millennia without this impulse. But where we once hunted for food, today we hunt for deals and information.
The same compulsion that kept us searching for food coerces us to open emails from Groupon and Appsumo. New shopping startups make the hunt for products entertaining by introducing variability to what the user may find next. Pinterest and Wanelo keep users searching with an endless supply of eye candy, a trove of dopamine flooding desirables.
REWARDS OF THE SELF
Finally, there are the variable rewards we seek for personal gratification. For example, from birth, things that stimulate our senses mesmerize us. Babies put everything in their mouths for the same reason there are flashing neon lights in Las Vegas. We love novel sensory stimulation.
We also seek mastery of the world around us. Game mechanics, found everywhere from Zynga games to business productivity apps like to-do lists, provide a variable rewards system built around our need to control, dominate, and complete challenges. Slaying new messages in your inbox stimulates neurons similar to those stimulated by playing StarCraft.
I don’t feel like there’s anthing to add here. It’s so painfully obvious that the pleasure we get from rewards is identical to our ancestors that it’d be hard not to look at them from this perspective. Basically, if you want your users to become obsessed — drive them crazy. Give them exactly what they want but only sometimes. Don’t make them wait too long though or they’ll find another way to get it but if you nail the variability aspect you’ll have them drooling for more.
Investment
The final component of the hooked model is investment. Investments are those little bits of ourselves that we put into our favorite products. We have a treasure trove of pictures and memories on Facebook, we’re on level 5 of Candycrush and we’ve built up a following on Snapchat. The fact that we’ve put time, energy and information into these platforms makes us more likely to come back and increasingly less likely to switch to something new. The more you get users to invest in your product the more likely they are to keep using it. Think of this from the Paleo perspective. Our ancestors built homes, friends and food sources in a certain area because it made their lives easier in the future. The more they “settled down” the less likely they were to need to move and the more likely they were to help their communities so that their lives just kept getting easier to live. Give your users a good reason to invest themselves in your product and you’re giving them an even better reason to come back.
Bringing It All Together
I honestly don’t think I can combine all of these elements any better than the hook model already does. By making your product simple to use, convenient in its purpose, variable in its rewards and worthwhile to invest in you’re going to have a hard time not growing a powerful platform and a community of supporters.
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