Summary: Hooked by Nir Eyal

5 Great Ideas from Hooked by Nir Eyal

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

1. Users who find value in a product are likely to tell friends about it. Hooked users become brand evangelists.
2. Habit is when not doing an action causes pain, discomfort, until its satisfied. It has a positive influence on a user's life. Habit forming products create an association in user's mind.
3. The ultimate goal of habit forming product is to solve a customer’s problem (pain) by creating an association, so the customer sees the product as relief or a solution.
4. What causes us to act, is not the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for the reward.
5. When designing a product, your goal is to solve a problem – eliminate a pain. You have to scratch the user's itch. Users who find a product that alleviates their pain, will form strong, positive associations withe the product over time.

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Have you read?

How to Write Viral Content: A Look at Contagious by Jonah Berger

Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas and Predict the Future by Rohit Bhargava

Review – Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas

Hooked by Nir Eyal in a Nutshell

I decided to read Hooked by Nir Eyal because I wanted to learn as much I could about virality. About how ideas spread. About why some products seem to catch a fire, capturing widespread attention, while others flop.

Although this book is about products capturing widespread attention, I believed that I could use some of the information, to write blog posts that go viral. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal is a guide to building habit-forming products and services. The book's content is based on the author’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. In Hooked, Eyal presents the 4-Step Hook Model, which he uses as a framework.

Why Nir Eyal Wrote Hooked

Nir Eyal wrote the book that he wished was available. He had questions that he couldn’t find the answers for.

“I embarked on a journey to learn how products change our actions, and at times, create compulsions. How did these companies engineer user behavior? What were the moral implications of building potentially addictive products? Most important, could the same forces that made these experiences so compelling also be used to build products so improve people’s lives? Where could I find the blueprint for forming habits?”

 

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Quick Look at 4-Step Hook Model

1. 1. Trigger: This is an actuator of behavior, like a spark plug. There are two types of triggers – external and internal. Habit forming products alert users with external triggers such as email, text message, blog post, a website link, app icon on phone, and so on.
   2. Action: After a trigger, the user takes an action, anticipating some kind of reward.
   3. Variable Reward: The user has a desire or craving. A variable reward is a tool used to hook users.
   4. Investment: This means that the user has to do the work. The user invests time, effort, data, social capital and money into the product or service. With this kind of investment, the user will likely go through the Hook Model again.

Hook Model designed to connect users’ problems with designer’s solution.

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

Summary of Hooked by Nir Eyal

To understand how to create habit forming products and services, you have to know what habit mean, and you must have a clear understanding of each step in the Hook Model.

Definition of Habit

“Habit is when not doing an action causes pain and discomfort until it is satisfied. Habit-forming products create associations in the user’s mind. A habit has a positive influence on user’s life.”

Habit Testing

Step 1: Identify

Define what it means to be a devoted user. How often should one use your product?

Step 2: Codify

You are looking for a Habit Path – a series of similar actions shared by your most loyal users

Step 3: Modify

Tracking users by cohort and comparing their activity with that of habitual users should guide how products evolve and improve.

The Hook Model

Triggers

Trigger: Actuator of behavior, which moves user to take action. There are both internal and external triggers.

External Triggers: These are embedded with information, which tells the users what to do next. It makes actions to take explicitly clear, to reduce the thinking needed to take the next action. The goal of external triggers is to point users into the Hook Model, so after successive cycles, they no longer need prompting from external triggers. There are four types of external triggers.

Four Types of External Triggers

1. Paid Trigger: Example of paid triggers include ads and search engine marketing.
   1. Can be expensive.
   2. Some companies use paid triggers to get new customers, but use other means to keep them.
2. Earned Trigger: Free, usually requires investment of time on public media relations.
   1. Can be short-lived. Examples include press mentions and viral videos. You have to keep product in spotlight.
3. Relationship Trigger: This is one person telling another about a product or service. This can be a highly effective trigger.
   1. It can drive viral hyper-growth.
4. Owned Trigger: An example is an app icon on a mobile device, email or newsletter.
   1. Trigger set after users sign up for it – submit their email address.
   2. Owned triggers prompt engagement until habit is formed.

Internal Triggers

When you form a habit, internal triggers activate it. The product is tightly tied with thought, emotion, or pre-existing routine, leverages internal triggers. They manifest automatically in the mind.

5 Whys Method

To illustrate the 5 Whys, I’m going to use the Strategic Reading Challenge as an example.

Q: Why would people want to participate in MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World?

A: They want to learn the key skills, develop the cultural awareness needed to succeed in today’s global workplace, grow professionally, and become a creative problem solver.

Q: Why would people want to develop the 10 key skills and cultural awareness?

A: They want to remain or become more valuable and marketable in the workplace.

Q: Why would they want to do that?

A: Being in that position will make them less vulnerable to downsizing and automation.

Q: Why would they want to do that?

A: So, they remain relevant in the workplace.

Q: Why would they care about that?

A: So, they will likely get stretch assignments and/or promotions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioZd3AxmnE

Action

Effective triggers drive people to take action. A habit is done automatically with little or not much thought. If it takes too much effort, it’s unlikely to happen. One of the most effective formulas for taking action is by Dr. B J Fogg.

3-Step Formula for Action – Dr B J Fogg

1. Sufficient motivation
2. Able to complete action
3. Trigger present to activate behavior

Fogg Behavioral Model

They are present at the same time. Motivation is the level of desire to take action. In other words, motivation is “the energy of action.” Make it easy for the user to take action. What steps do your users have to take to complete the action? Ask yourself, “What is the thing that’s missing that would allow my users to proceed to the next step?” Easier equates to better.

Every Behavior is Driven by Three Core Motivators

1. All humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
2. Seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.
3. Seek hope and avoid fear.

6 Elements of Simplicity

1. Time – how long it to complete action.
2. Money – the fiscal cost of taking an action.
3. Physical Effort – the amount of labor involved in taking action.
4. Brain Cycle – the level of mental effort and focus required to take action.
5. Social Deviance – how accepted the behavior is by others.
6. Non-Routine – how much the actions disrupt your routine.

Variable Reward

What causes us to take action is not the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for the reward. To hold attention, the product must have an ongoing degree of novelty.

3 Variable Reward Types

1. The Tribe: This is the search for social rewards fueled by connectedness with people. We are social beings, so we are driven by our connectedness to other people.
2. The Hunt: This is search for materials, resources and information.
3. The Self: This is the search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and competition.

Investment

Little investments can lead to big changes in future behaviors. Investment is about longer term reward and not instant gratification. Collections of experiences and memories, in aggregate, become more valuable over time, and the service becomes harder to leave as users’ personal investment in the site grows. Investing time and effort into learning to use a product is a form of investment and stored value.

If you need help and would like a program that’s already set-up to help you read more books, Join MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World, click the link to buy.

Final Thoughts on Hooked by Nir Eyal

Hooked by Nir Eyal is an excellent book packed with a lot of useful information to help you build habit-forming products and services. The Hook Model walks you through the process. I used the content in the book to map the steps I need to take to improve the Strategic Read Challenge. All I need now is to implement them.

UPDATE: First Published January 2017. This article contains Amazon affiliate links, which means if you click on a link and buy any of the books from Amazon, the company will pay me a small commission.

 Hooked Hooked Workbook Contagious Non-Obvious 2018  Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness