Book Review — HOOKED : How to Build Habit-Forming Products

HOOKED is a wonderful book written by Nir Eyal that explains in detail how we can build a successful product in whatever industry we choose. If you have ever wondered what drives us to open an app like Instagram multiple times a day, you’ll need to look no further than this masterpiece by Nir. The language is extremely easy to understand, and there are several examples and case studies that helps us to understand each concept in depth.

Below are some points from the book which appeared important to me, and would help you get an understanding of what it is all about.

• Companies that form strong user habits enjoy several benefits to their bottom line. Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions. A habit is at work when users feel a tad bored and instantly open Twitter. They feel a pang of loneliness and before rational thought occurs, they are scrolling through their Facebook feeds.
• The heart of the book is The Hook Model. This model describes an experience designed to connect the user’s problem to a solution frequently enough to form a habit. The Hook Model has four phases: trigger, action, variable reward, and investment.

Trigger:

• Triggers cue the user to take action and are the first step in the Hook Model.
• Triggers come in two types — external and internal.
• External triggers tell the user what to do next by placing information within the user’s environment.
• Internal triggers tell the user what to do next through associations stored in the user’s memory.
• Negative emotions frequently serve as internal triggers.
• To build a habit-forming product, makers need to understand which user emotions may be tied to internal triggers and know how to leverage external triggers to drive the user to action.

Action:

• The second step in the Hook is action.
• The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward.
• As described by Dr. B. J. Fogg’s Behavior Model:
• For any behavior to occur, a trigger must be present at the same time as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action.
• To increase the desired behavior, ensure a clear trigger is present; next, increase ability by making the action easier to do; finally, align with the right motivator.
• Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; seeking hope and avoiding fear; seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection.
• Ability is influenced by the six factors of time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, and non-routineness. Ability is dependent on users and their context at that moment.
• Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts we take to make quick decisions. Product designers can utilize many of the hundreds of heuristics to increase the likelihood of their desired action.

Variable rewards:

• Variable reward is the third phase of the Hook Model, and there are three types of variable rewards: the tribe, the hunt, and the self.
• Rewards of the tribe is the search for social rewards fuelled by connectedness with other people.
• Rewards of the hunt is the search for material resources and information.
• Rewards of the self is the search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion.
• When our autonomy is threatened, we feel constrained by our lack of choices and often rebel against doing a new behaviour. Psychologists refer to this as reactance. Maintaining a sense of user autonomy is a requirement for repeat engagement.
• Experiences with finite variability become increasingly predictable with use and lose their appeal over time. Experiences that maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use exhibit infinite variability.
• Variable rewards must satisfy users’ needs while leaving them wanting to reengage with the product.

Investment:

• The investment phase is the fourth step in the Hook Model.
• Unlike the action phase, which delivers immediate gratification, 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, and avoid cognitive dissonance.
• Investment comes after the variable reward phase, when users are primed to reciprocate.
• Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more it is used. They enable the accrual of stored value in the form of content, data, followers, reputation, or skill.
• Investments increase the likelihood of users passing through the Hook again by loading the next trigger to start the cycle all over again.

The Morality of Manipulation

• The Hook Model is fundamentally about changing people’s behaviours, but the power to build persuasive products should be used with caution. Creating habits can be a force for good, but it can also be used for nefarious purposes.
• To help us assess the morality behind how we manipulate users, it is helpful to determine which of the four categories our work fits into. Are we a facilitator, peddler, entertainer, or dealer?
• Facilitators use their own product and believe it can materially improve people’s lives. They have the highest chance of success because they most closely understand the needs of their users.
• Peddlers believe their product can materially improve people’s lives but do not use it themselves. They must beware of the hubris and inauthenticity that comes from building solutions for people they do not understand firsthand.
• Entertainers use their product but do not believe it can improve people’s lives. They can be successful, but without making the lives of others better in some way, the entertainer’s products often lack staying power.
• Dealers neither use the product nor believe it can improve people’s lives. They have the lowest chance of finding long-term success and often find themselves in morally precarious positions.

Keen observation of one’s own behaviour can lead to new insights and habit-forming product opportunities. Identifying areas where a new technology makes cycling through the Hook Model faster, more frequent, or more rewarding provides fertile ground for developing new habit-forming products. New interfaces lead to transformative behaviour change and business opportunities.

Reading HOOKED has been an absolute delight for me. I’m pretty sure I’ll read this book multiple times and I would treat it as a handbook in my journey as an entrepreneur. I would even dare say that if you are dreaming of building an innovative product, you must read this book first, and then your chances of converting your dreams to reality would increase dramatically. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.