Hooked. How to create habit forming products.

Triggers, actions and rewards. Some thoughts from Nir Eyal, author of ‘hooked’ on how products become addictive.

The products that have made the most profound impact on us over the last few years were first viewed by everyone as toys. The first time you interacted (played) with Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and, of course, Facebook — which now touches 1 in 6 people daily — there was no indication that they would take over your life. It was just a bit of fun.

But that’s exactly what the best products do. Habits are formed through a very simple piece of methodology that appeals to everyones pre-existing emotions.

If you can create a hook for you product then you have a chance of creating a habit — defined as behavior a consumer does with little or no conscious thought. Half of all human behavior is a habit.

And if we are smart we can use these patterns we learn from successful companies to create good, healthy habits. No one wins long term if we create more phone zombies.

To create a habit your product needs a hook. The hook connects a problem to a product with enough frequency to form a habit. Frequency is the key. If someone doesn’t need your product to solve a problem in a weeks time after the first use it is practically impossible to form a habit.

A successful product hook has four steps; trigger, action, reward and investment.

Triggers.

Triggers tell users what to do next. There are external and internal triggers. External triggers are things any designer or creative is familiar with; a ‘click here’ button, an icon telling you that you have unread messages etc. Most people are good at those. Where things get more interesting is with internal triggers. Frequent internal triggers are negative emotions like loneliness, boredom or fatigue.

There is only one reason to use a product — to modulate our mood. To make us feel something different, positive or negative — whether conscious or not. The best products prompt us to use them — with no conscious thought — to offset those negative emotions. Nir told us that research has shown that depressed people check their email more than happy people.

If you are lonely you check out Facebook. If you are unsure of something you Google it. (If you are lost you use Google Maps). If you are bored you check Twitter, YouTube, SnapChat etc. Before we even realize we are bored we are already hitting play on the YouTube button.

So what is the pain point, or the frequent itch, that you product is going to solve?

It’s no coincidence that Zuckerberg, Reed Hoffman and the founders of Instagram were all joint CS and Psychology students.

How do internal and external triggers fuse? Look at the first time you used Instagram. Your external trigger was probably a friend posting a link to Facebook or Twitter. You install the app. The app icon is in itself another external trigger as are the notifications you get when a friend posts or someone likes your photo.

The internal trigger is the idea of not losing that moment. Nir explained that it had taken Kodak 100 years and billions of dollars in marketing costs to associate Kodak with moments (specifically moments you don’t want to lose). In a few years Instagram has surpassed kodak and owns lost moments because of a network effect where each user is teaching all the other users how to feel about this product. If your friend takes a picture of their lunch then you are more inclined to do that too. Also when you use the product other internal triggers are met, such as FOMO and boredom. This multiplier effect is what makes a product addictive.

Action.

The second part of the hook is action — defined here as the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward or relief from a negative state. So when we scroll on Pinterest, search on Google, hit play on YouTube these are simple actions that result in an immediate reward.

For that action to take place the user needs to have the right mix of ability and motivation. There are various different levers you can pull to affect motivation but they relate to six simple thoughts; pleasure vs pain, hope vs fear and acceptance versus rejection. For example every time you open Instagram you hope someone has said something nice about your picture. When you open your email inbox there is always an element of fear that there might be a crappy email you have to deal with.

Ability is your capacity to do that particular behavior. It doesn’t matter how high your motivation is if you don’t have the ability to act upon it. For example if your phone rings there are a number of reasons why you might not answer it (the action it is designed for). You may see it’s from someone you don’t want to talk to — low motivation. Or it might be someone you really want to talk to but you are in the middle of a dinner party or meeting. Your motivation is high but your ability is low. For a product to be a hit the motivation and ability to act upon it both need to be there and you need a trigger to make it happen.

Frequently, product designers think it’s a lack of motivation that stunts their failures. But Nir explained that nine times out of ten it’s a lack of the ability and trigger that causes problems. For example look at early Twitter. The first home page had lots of different things you could look at. The thought was that you needed to be convinced to try out this service, you needed motivation. But that’s not true. No one came to twitter.com lacking motivation. What gets in peoples way is the ability to act. In other words too many other choices other than sign up or log in. If you want someone to sign in — don’t let them do anything else.

Reward.

Our brains are hard-wired to seek rewards. Originally scientists believed that our brains’ main desire was to stimulate pleasure but we now know that it is actually the pursuit of pleasure that is the pleasure. The pursuit is what creates cravings. Our brains are most active when they are anticipating rewards and actually less active when we receive those awards. The feeling of wanting a cupcake is more pleasurable than the eating.

It is entirely possible to supercharge or manufacture desire.

Let me explain.

Just one second.

Of course that’s a cheap trick and it worked better when Nir did it on stage, but he made the point about variable rewards being even greater at creating the craving reflex.

There are three types of variable rewards we seek. Tribe. Hunt and Self. Tribe rewards are empathetic moments of joy; social media basically, public likes and so on. Hunt rewards used to be primal things like….hunting, gathering food. Would you spear an antelope that day or not? Now hunt rewards are more like slot machines. Nir explained that the reason most of the successful products we are addicted to have feeds is that they act like a slot machine. You pull down — scroll — and see what you get. Tristan Harris also uses this metaphor. Self rewards are about mastery and competency. When you play Dots you play so that you get to the next level. You don’t make any money, maybe you look at the leaderboard but really it’s about feeling good that you mastered something yourself.

So this seems easy, create variable rewards, but one thing to remember is that they must scratch the itch, hit the pain point. A few years back gamification was thought to be the key to all products but most times it didn’t work because there was no connection between the reward and the internal trigger. The itch was not scratched.

Investment.

This is the last step and the most overlooked. What this means is that the user puts something into the product in anticipation of a future benefit. They are not seeing an immediate reward. For example if you send a message in Slack nothing happens. But you are investing in the idea that someone will reply. You get an external trigger — the little red dot or a notification — that lets you know you have a reply. So you are passing through the hook again.

Storing value is a big deal. Almost everything we use in the physical world loses value the more we use it; cars, clothes etc. But with habit forming technology the more we use it the more valuable it becomes. The more followers you have on twitter the more value it has. If we had to pay for twitter I am more likely to pay to keep my 5000 followers than someone with 50.

This value is very real on products like ebay and airbnb. The more time I have invested, the better my profile the more money I can charge. So even if a better product than airbnb came along I’m not likely to leave.

Nir ended on this point. Silicon Valley graveyards are full of ‘better products’. It’s not the best product that wins, it’s the product that can capture the monopoly of the mind. And you do that through creating a hook. Your hook is an never ending cycle of of triggers, rewards, actions and investments.

Simple.

Thanks Nir.

Now go buy his book. You are motivated. You have the ability, through Amazon or your local book store. And if you’re still reading this then you have definitely been triggered :)