“Hook Model” to improve product engagement and build habit-forming products
What are habit-forming products?
When people use the products in a frequency of at least a week, associate internal triggers (emotion or habit or situation) to come back to the product, it’s called habit-forming product. Healthy habits are formed when a user finds value in the product and puts little or no thought to use the product
Example: When I need to take notes, I find myself opening GoodNotes, without any thought. If I am curious and want to find out, I use google. When I am on the road, I use google maps for direction. For these products, I don’t need an external trigger, I have associated these products with my emotion or situation and I use these products with little or no thought.
Hook Model Explained
“Hook model” or desire engine is a framework developed by Nir Eyal, to help build habit-forming products. As the user goes through the cycle of four phases repeatedly and fast, they build habits in the process.
TRIGGER
What are the “Internal Triggers” that the product addresses?
Internal triggers are internal states — emotions, routines, situation, people or place that triggers the use of the product. The stimulus for using the product is coming from within us. Internal trigger when they occur in sufficient frequency and user associates these triggers to use the product, then the product becomes a habit
Example: I am bored, I turn to Youtube (Negative Emotion). I am curious looking for information, I turn to “Google”. I have a habit of doing Yoga early morning, I turn to Yoga Studio. I turn to Groupon because of fear of missing out on good deals.
When we understand the deep emotional needs of the user, going beyond the jobs that he wants to get done, it broadens the solution space or opportunities. Example: People don’t say they want a hammer, they say they want to hang pictures on the wall. What if you know the emotional need for hanging pictures, this would allow you to be creative with more solutions
What are the “External Triggers” that activate the internal triggers?
The cue for taking action is coming from the external environment — advertisements, product recommendations from friends, newsletter, email, “Buy” button, vending machine, etc.
However, the goal is for people to associate the product with a thought, emotion, routine and come back to using the product because of these internal triggers
ACTION
What’s the simplest behavior that the user performs in anticipation of reward?
Action can be in the form of scrolling the newsfeed, replying to the email. It’s designed to be simple, easier than thinking to overcome the barrier to act, and becomes a habit.
Based on the principles of behavior design, “Behaviour = Trigger (user experience) +Motivation(marketing)+Ability (product design)” -Nir Eyal
Example: I didn’t answer my doorbell, why did I behave that way?. I could say my doorbell was not working it didn’t ring meaning(trigger was absent). It could be I was taking a shower(ability). It could be it was a stranger, I wanted to avoid (motivation).
The levers of ability are time, money, effort, social deviance, and non-routine. Example: If the product is easy to use takes less effort, I will use it. If the action is part of my daily habit and social norm, I am likely to act.
VARIABLE REWARD
Do the rewards leave the user wanting more?
We can vary the frequency, amplitude, and type of the reward to keep customers wanting more and engaged. The variability keeps the user excited and they keep coming to the product.
There are three types of rewards
Tribe (social rewards): We are looking for social validation and acceptance
Hunt(resources — Food, Money, Information): We are looking for resources. We keep scrolling linked in or Twitter feed for reward in form of valuable information
Self ( mastery, competency, consistency, completion, purpose): We are looking for competence, mastery of a subject, completion to enjoy personal gratification
Example: I am doing a course on LinkedIn learning, reward employed is rewards of self through mastery of the topic, the reward of the tribe through social validation when I post the certificate of completion. After I complete, I get recommended to take my skills to next level (variability of reward) and I get hooked to do more.
INVESTMENT
How do you get people to invest in the product to make it better?
Investment is when the user puts in some work that increases his likelihood of another pass through the loop when a trigger occurs. The anticipation of future rewards makes the user invest in the form of either time, money, effort, personal data, emotional and social capital. Investment doesn’t provide immediate gratification but future benefits. It does two things, ”stores value” — improves the value of the product and “loads trigger” — user is engaged and likely to respond to trigger.
Example: People put investment in terms of labor to assemble Ikea furniture making the product loved and valued. They often use creativity (investment) to combine different pieces and come up with new products -Ikea hacks (stores value) and showcase to friends and family (social reward) triggering more purchases(loads next trigger)
Investment of “personal data” improves the product by providing personalized content and meaningful recommendation, thereby increasing the value of the product. Connecting with more people on linked in improves the value of the service when I am seeking a job. Investmentment in terms of “curation of content” has rewarded me with “followers”, “reputation” and improved the value of the service, so I am more likely to use the product.
When to apply Hook’s Model
- Build habit-forming products
All habit-forming products need a hook. We need to design all the components of the hook model into the product to make sure people come back on their own in the desired frequency. Even in the enterprise SAAS space, you pay as you use products, there is a need to increase the use or customers stop paying for it. Segmentation is employed, when we are designing the product using the hook’s model since different customer segments will look at different rewards even though the trigger is the same.
Example: When I am bored, I turn to Pinterest, while others may turn to Facebook and Youtube. When designing components of hook’s model into the product, we need to account for the needs of the customer segment we are addressing
This model is used in the early stages of product development to make sure we cater to the four components to get unprompted user engagement. We can buy growth but not engagement so we need to build it into our product -Nir Eyal
2. Diagnosis Tool, why are our customers not forming habits?
We can use Hook’s Model as a diagnostic tool if we don’t see at least 5% of the users are habitual. We can review if we have identified the correct trigger? if the action is easy to do? does the reward motivate the user? does the investment improve the product? etc. Alternately, the business model doesn’t call for a habit-forming product.
3. Behaviour Design
Not all business models are based on habit-forming products. However, they can still use the hook model to understand what affects user behavior, what are the barriers that prevent the use of the product, and the types of rewards that motivate the user to engage. B = MAT , Behavior=(Motivation, Ability,Trigger)
Example applications of Hook Model
Example of application of Hook’s Model in LinkedIn, based on my analysis as a user.
Habit Testing process
Nir Eyal also provides a process “Habit Testing”, which can be used to test incremental changes in the product to improve the number of habitual users.
- Identify (“Who are the habitual users”)
What is the frequency to be considered a habitual user? Who are your habitual users? What percentage of your users are habitual overall and across different cohorts?
For Facebook, it can be several times a day to be habitual but for LinkedIn, it can be few times a week. As per Nir Eyal, a habitual product need to have at least 5% users who are habitual users. If the product doesn’t have at least 5% habitual users, then we need to analyze different parts of hook’s model.
2. Codify (“What are their habits, what makes the product habit-forming)
How do these habitual users use the product? what’s unique about them, what features they use most, and what’s the path users took to form habits? Example: Twitter found that, if people followed a minimum of 30 people they stick around and hence they changed the product to ask users to follow at the time of onboarding.
3. Modify (“Modify the experience to bring in more habitual customers”)
As we make changes in the product on various parts of hook’s model (external triggers, internal triggers, action, variable reward, and investment), we observe how the changes affected user engagement, does it improve the habitual users from 5% to 10%. This testing can be done on different cohorts since different segments of users look for different rewards even though the trigger is the same.
Consideration of whether or not to build habit-forming products
We need to consider building habit-forming if the business model or nature of the product is habit-forming, we believe we are improving people’s lives and we will use the product ourselves. If the internal triggers that bring people to use the product, do not happen frequently then those products can’t be habit-forming
Reference
- Book “Hooked” by Nir Eyal https://www.nirandfar.com/habit-testing/
- https://www.nirandfar.com/habit-testing/
- Hook Canvas by Nir Eyal
