The Hook Model

How big companies like Facebook and Google build habit-forming products, and how can you too.

Image credit: Hannah Morgan

TL;DR:

• Habit-forming products are core to a business’ success. They act as both vitamins and painkillers.
• Habits are formed in four phases: trigger, action, reward, investment.
• Triggers are the actuator of behaviour and lead to an action. Ad, for example, is a trigger.
• Actions are steps that a user needs to take in order to use a product. They should be simple to take.
• Rewards are the fulfilment of the outcome that motivated a user to take action on a trigger.
• Let users invest (followers, reputation, content, etc) in your product to increase users perceived value of the product.

Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners check their device within fifteen minutes of waking up every morning. Perhaps more startling, fully one-third of Americans can say they would rather give up sex than lose their cellphones.

The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions. It’s the impulse to check a message notification. It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram to check notifications, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.

How do companies, producing little more than bits of code displayed on a screen, seemingly control users’ minds? What makes some products so habit forming? — Hooked

The Hook Model

Forming habits is imperative for the survival of many products. Amassing millions of users is no longer good enough. Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. Although some companies are just waking up to this new reality, others are already cashing in.

The process to hook users into a product boils down to four phases: trigger, action, variable reward and investment.

Trigger

A trigger is the actuator of behaviour — the spark plug in the engine. It’s an external (or internal) event that gets a user to try your product. Every habit-forming product starts with a trigger like a website link, a personalised advertisement on social media, or the app icon on a phone.

External triggers communicate the next action the user should take and is delivered through any number of things in our environment. An internal trigger manifests automatically in users’ minds and is tightly coupled with a thought, an emotion or a routine.

Which product comes to mind when you think of online search? Chances are that it’s Google.

Action

Following the trigger comes action: the steps that a user need to take in order to use a product. To initiate action, doing must be easier than thinking. An action is a behaviour, and it will occur when motivation, ability, and triggers are present at the same time and in sufficient degrees.

A simple action, for example, is you clicking on an ad on your news feed that prompts you to download an app.

Variable Reward

When a user takes an action the product or service must reliably deliver on what it promised. Rewards are the fulfilment of the outcome that motivated us to take action on a trigger. They are the objectives that a user came to achieve using a product. And to keep users engaged once they act upon a trigger, products need to deliver on their promises.

But if expected rewards are predictable then users won’t get excited about your product as much when it’s unpredictable, that’s why variability in a product is an important feature to have. It’s important to note that variability shouldn’t come at the cost of the outcome itself.

Investment

Investment is one of the most important phase of the hook model. That is what drives users to re-engage with your product. It is something of value that a user has invested in your product. It’s the act of users putting something into the product such as time, data, social capital, or money through subscriptions.

The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more likely are they to value it. And the stored value user put into the product increases the likelihood that they will use it again in the future and comes in a variety of forms.

For example, the more followers you have on Instagram the less likely are you to leave the platform.

Parting words

As an entrepreneur or a product designer, the hook model is the perfect framework for designing a product that users love and come back every day to use. So before designing your next product or service, ask yourself this:

1. What do users really want? What pain is your product relieving? (Internal trigger)
2. What brings users to your service? (External trigger)
3. What is the simplest action users take in anticipation of reward, and how can you simplify your product to make this action easier? (Action)
4. Are users fulfilled by the reward yet left wanting more? (Variable reward)
5. What “bit of work” do users invest in your product? Does it load the next trigger and store value to improve the product with use? (Investment)

This shortbound was based on the book called “Hooked” by Nir Eyal. The book goes into much more depth with examples and case studies than we can possibly cover here, so we highly recommend you buy it. Link to buy on Amazon — Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

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