Book Summary - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

In this blog post, we'll be diving into the book "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" by Nir Eyal. This book is about the science of habit-forming products and how they can create engaging and successful products. We'll look at the key ideas and takeaways from the book and how it can help you create products that people will love. So, sit back, relax, and explore the book "Hooked."

Overview

The book is divided into four parts:

The first part introduces the concept of habit-forming products and explains why they are so effective at engaging users. Next, Eyal explains the key elements that make a product habit-forming, including triggers, actions, rewards, and investments.

The book's second part provides a step-by-step process for creating habit-forming products. It goes over how to identify the right triggers and actions, creates rewards that keep users coming back, and creates investments that encourage users to make the product a part of their lives.

The third part of the book provides real-world examples and case studies of successful habit-forming products from the companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It examines the strategies that were used to create them.

The fourth part of the book covers the ethical considerations of creating habit-forming products. It emphasizes the importance of creating beneficial products for users, not just profitable for companies. It also discusses the potential negative consequences of creating products that are too engaging and how to create healthy products for users.

Who's it for?

This book is a must-read for entrepreneurs, product managers, and designers who want to create products that engage users and form habits. It is also an excellent resource for marketers and business leaders who want to understand how to build long-term customer engagement and loyalty.

Key takeaways

Cognitive psychologists define habits as “automatic behaviors triggered by situational cues” - things we do with little or no conscious thought.

1. Habit Zone - Companies can assess the habit-forming potential of their products by analyzing two factors:

Frequency - How often product-related behaviors occur
Perceived utility - How often and rewarding behavior is in the user's mind.

Note - A behavior that occurs with enough frequency and perceived utility enters the Habit Zone, helping to make it a default behavior. Suppose either of these factors falls short, and the behavior lies below the threshold. In that case, it is less likely that the desired behavior will become a habit.

Habit Zone ; Source — “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal

2. Hook Model - It's a framework that provides companies a step-by-step guide to building a product/service that solves customer problems and creates a habit of engaging with it. The model has four phases:

Trigger

Action

Variable reward

Investment

Hook Model ; Source — “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal

3. Triggers - These inform/cue the user of what to do next. Triggers come in two types - external & internal.

External triggers tell the user what to do next by placing information within the user's environment. An external trigger communicates the next action the user should take. Often, the desired action is made explicitly clear.

Paid Triggers – Such as advertising, search engine marketing, or influencers.

Earned Triggers – Such as media coverage, viral content, or app store placement.

Relationship Triggers – Like user invitations, referral marketing, or social alerts.

Owned Triggers – Such as email lists, app notifications, or other opt-in alerts.

The goal of the external trigger is to propel users into the Hook Model so that, after successive cycles, they no longer need further prompting. When users form habits, they are cued by internal triggers rather than by ongoing external triggers.

Internal triggers tell the user what to do next through associations stored in the user's memory. In addition, negative emotions (Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness ) 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.

The goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user’s pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company’s product or service as the source of relief.

4. Action - The action is the behavior executed in anticipation of reward.

Action is critical to successful habit formation. If the user doesn't take action, the trigger is useless.

According to Dr. B. J. Fogg for any behavior to occur, a trigger must be present simultaneously as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action.

Fogg Behavior Model is represented in the formula B = MAT

Three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors-

Motivation - Defines the level of desire to take that action.

Action - Necessary steps to complete an action and the user's willingness, or capacity for completing those steps

Trigger - must be present to activate the behavior.

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

Factors impacting ability

Time - How long it takes to complete an action.

Money - The fiscal cost of taking action.

Physical effort - The amount of labor involved in taking action.

Brain cycles - The mental effort and the focus required to take action.

Social deviance - How accepted the behavior is by others.

Non-routine - How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.

The goal is to make the user's action easier. The easier an action, the more likely the user is to do it and to continue the cycle through the next phase of the Hook Model.

5. Reward - The third step in the Hook Model is the variable reward phase. This is where we solve the user's problem and reinforce the user's motivation for taking action in the previous stage.

Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.

Habit-forming products utilize one or more of the following three types of variable rewards:

Tribe Rewards – The search for social rewards fueled by connectedness with other people. (Eg, likes & comments )

Hunt Rewards – The search for material resources and information. (Twitter feed, Pinterest feed, etc.)

Self Rewards – The search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion. (Games stage advancement )

The goal is to provide variable rewards that satisfy users’ needs while leaving them wanting to reengage with the product.

Also, experiences with finite variability become increasingly predictable with use and lose their appeal over time. Experiences that maintain user's interest by sustaining variability with use are more last longing.

6. Investment - The fourth step in the Hook Model is the investment phase. Unlike the action phase, which delivers immediate gratification, the investment phase concerns the anticipation of rewards in the future.

Here are five ways a user can store value within a product or service:

Collection - In aggregate, the collection of memories and experiences becomes more valuable over time, and the service becomes harder to leave as users' personal investment in the site grows.

Data - The company found that the more information users invested in the site, the more committed they became to it. E.g., images, videos, reels, etc

Followers - Investing in following the right people increases the product's value by displaying more relevant and exciting content in each user's Twitter feed. It also tells Twitter much about its users, improving the service overall.

Reputation - Reputation makes users, both buyers and sellers, more likely to stick with whichever service they have invested their efforts in to maintain a high-quality score (

Skill - Once users have invested the effort to acquire a skill, they are less likely to switch to a competing product.

Investments in a product create preferences because

The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it

We Seek to Be Consistent with Our Past Behaviors

We Avoid Cognitive Dissonance

Investments increase the likelihood of users passing through the Hook again by loading the next trigger to start the cycle.

The goal is to progressively stage the investment you want from users into small chunks of work, starting with small, easy tasks and building up to harder tasks during successive cycles through the Hook Model.

7. Morality - The Hook Model is fundamentally about changing people’s behaviors, but the power to build persuasive products should be used with caution.However, although creating habits can be a force for good, it can also be addictive and destructive for users.

While building habit building products, we should keep 2 questions in mind to assess the morality

Would I use the product myself?

Will the product help users materially improve their lives?

The makers can assess the morality of a habit-forming product through the Manipulation Matrix.

Facilitators use their product and believe it can 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 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 products but do not believe they can improve people's lives. They can be successful, but making the lives of others better in some way is necessary for the entertainer's products to maintain staying power.

Dealers neither use the product nor believe it can improve people's lives. They have a lower chance of finding long-term success and often find themselves in morally precarious positions.

8. Habit Testing -The Hook Model helps the product designer develop a habit-forming technology prototype. It also helps uncover potential weaknesses in an existing product’s habit-forming potential.

Building a habit-forming product is an iterative process and requires user-behavior analysis and continuous experimentation.

Identify how people are using the product.

Codify these findings in search of habitual users. To generate new hypotheses, study the actions and paths taken by devoted users.

Modify the product to influence more users to follow the same path as your habitual users,

Evaluate results and continue to modify as needed.

Conclusion

"Hooked" is a book that provides a valuable framework for creating habit-forming products. It is a must-read for product design, development, or marketing. It provides an in-depth understanding of the psychology behind habit-forming products. The book is full of examples and case studies from various industries. It offers practical tips and guidance for creating products that people will love and use habitually. It also covers the ethical considerations of creating habit-forming products, encouraging product creators to create beneficial products for the users. I hope you enjoyed reading a summary of "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" and learned something new. However, it's not meant to substitute for reading a book. The original text provides a much richer and more detailed learning experience. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing more book summaries with you in the future.

Happy reading !!!