Hooked Nir Eyal Quotes

Users who continually find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it.

79 percent of smartphone owners check their device within 15 minutes of waking up every morning.

Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.

Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, realized that as customers form routines around a product, they come to depend upon it and become less sensitive to price.

all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.

To change behavior, products must ensure the user feels in control. People must want to use the service, not feel they have to.

Habit-forming products often start as nice-to-haves (vitamins) but once the habit is formed, they become must-haves (painkillers).

products that require a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail

Gourville claims that for new entrants to stand a chance, they can’t just be better, they must be nine times better. Why such a high bar? Because old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines. Gourville writes that products that require a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using the new product are clear and substantial.

If it can’t be used for evil, it’s not a superpower.

Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse—abandonment.

One method is to try asking the question "why" as many times as it takes to get to an emotion. Usually this will happen by the fifth “why.” This is a technique adapted from the Toyota Production System described by Taiichi Ohno as the “5 Whys Method.” Ohno wrote that it was "the basis of Toyota's scientific approach ... by repeating ‘why?’ five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.

The study demonstrated that people suffering from symptoms of depression used the Internet more. Why is that? One hypothesis is that those with depression experience negative emotions more frequently than the general population and seek relief by turning to technology to lift their mood.

Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions.

Companies who form strong user habits enjoy several benefits to their bottom line.

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain. It

The mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.

there are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.

Make your product so simple that users already know how to use it, and you’ve got a winner.

Internet is, “a giant machine designed to give people what they want.

Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain and often have quantifiable markets.

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain.

For new behaviors to really take hold, they must occur often.

Reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring unconsciously.

the first place for the entrepreneur or designer to look for new opportunities is in the mirror.

Users take their technologies with them to bed.[cxiv] When they wake up, they check for notifications, tweets, and updates, sometimes even before saying “Good morning” to their loved ones.

The ultimate 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. First,

The Hook Model is designed to connect the user’s problem with the designer’s solution frequently enough to form a habit. It is a framework for building products that solve user needs through long-term engagement.

In contrast, vitamins do not necessarily solve an obvious pain-point. Instead they appeal to users’ emotional rather than functional needs. When we take our multivitamin each morning, we don't really know if it is actually making us healthier.

Without variability we are like children in that once we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited by the experience. The same rules that apply to puppies also apply to products. To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.

In a classic Aesop’s Fable, a hungry fox encounters grapes hanging from a vine. The fox desperately wants the grapes. But as hard as he may try, he can not reach them. Frustrated, the fox decides the grapes must be sour and that he therefore would not want them anyway.

Motivation or Ability — Which Should You Increase First? After uncovering the triggers that prompt user actions and deciding which actions you want to turn into habits, you can increase motivation and ability to spark the likelihood of your users taking a desired behavior. But which should you invest in first, motivation or ability? Where is your time and money better spent? The answer is always to start with ability.

If you’re skeptical that Google is habit-forming (and you are a frequent Google user), just try using Bing.

Once a technology has created an association in users’ minds that the product is the solution of choice, they return on their own, no longer needing prompts from external triggers.

According to a study by a mobile analytics firm, 26 percent of mobile apps in 2010 were downloaded and used only once.

It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.

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

We often think the Internet enables you to do new things … But people just want to do the same things they’ve always done.

For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain. Take

Consequently, any technology or product that significantly reduces the steps to complete a task will enjoy high adoption rates by the people it assists. For

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time . . . Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.” Blogger

For some businesses, forming habits is a critical component to success, but not every business requires habitual user engagement.

When users start to automatically cue their next behavior, the new habit becomes part of their everyday routine. Over time, Barbra associates Facebook with her need for social connection.

new behaviors have a short half-life, as our minds tend to revert to our old ways of thinking and doing. Experiments show that lab animals habituated to new behaviors tend to regress to their first learned behaviors over time.

The invention of the telephone was also dismissed at first. Sir William Henry Preece, the chief engineer of the British post office, famously declared, “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.

So why haven’t more Google users switched to Bing? Habits keep users loyal. If a user is familiar with the Google interface, switching to Bing requires cognitive effort. Although many aspects of Bing are similar to Google, even a slight change in pixel placement forces the would-be user to learn a new way of interacting with the site. Adapting to the differences in the Bing interface is what actually slows down regular Google users and makes Bing feel inferior, not the technology itself. 

Habit Testing.” It is a process inspired by the build-measure-learn methodology championed by the lean startup movement. Habit Testing offers insights and actionable data to inform the design of habit-forming products. It helps clarify who your devotees are, what parts of your product are habit-forming (if any), and why those aspects of your product are changing user behavior.

Why #1: Why would Julie want to use e-mail? Answer: So she can send and receive messages. Why #2: Why would she want to do that? Answer: Because she wants to share and receive information quickly. Why #3: Why does she want to do that? Answer: To know what’s going on in the lives of her coworkers, friends, and family. Why #4: Why does she need to know that? Answer: To know if someone needs her. Why #5: Why would she care about that? Answer: She fears being out of the loop. Now

As the machine scanned the blood flow in the various regions of their brains, the tasters were informed of the cost of each wine sampled. The sample started with a $5 wine and progressed to a $90 bottle. Interestingly, as the price of the wine increased, so did the participant's enjoyment of the wine. Not only did they say they enjoyed the wine more but their brain corroborated their feelings, showing higher spikes in the regions associated with pleasure. Little did the study participants realize, they were tasting the same wine each time.

You are now equipped to use the Hook Model to ask yourself these five fundamental questions for building effective hooks:   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)

A classic paper by John Gourville, a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, stipulates that “many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.”8 Gourville claims that for new entrants to stand a chance, they can’t just be better, they must be nine times better. Why such a high bar? Because old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines. Gourville writes that products that require a high degree of behavior change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using the new product are clear and substantial.

The Endowed Progress Effect Punch cards are often used by retailers to encourage repeat business. With each purchase, customers get closer to receiving a free product or service. These cards are typically awarded empty and in effect, customers start at zero percent complete. What would happen if retailers handed customers punch cards with punches already given? Would people be more likely to take action if they had already made some progress? An experiment sought to answer this very question.[lxvi] Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with 8 squares and the other given a punch card with 10 squares but with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase 8 car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers — those that were given two free punches — had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate. The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal. Sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook utilize this heuristic to encourage people to divulge more information about themselves when completing their online profiles. On LinkedIn, every user starts with some semblance of progress (figure 19). The next step is to “Improve Your Profile Strength” by supplying additional information.

quickly solve the user’s psychological need by providing certainty about what they should do in the gym.

Next comes the variable reward phase of Fitbod’s Hooked Model. Not only is there an element of surprise in discovering which exercises the app chooses for me (rewards of the hunt),

And Fitbod helps by setting achievable, incremental goals with each exercise.

Fitbod gets smarter with use,

After reading Hooked, the founders of the Fitbod App targeted a very specific user habit. Unlike competitors who went after vague behaviors like “build a healthy lifestyle,” Fitbod sought to own the internal trigger related to the uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty of not knowing what to do in the gym. Fitbod’s action phase quickly solves the user’s psychological discomfort by providing very specific instructions with a single tap of the app. In Fitbod’s variable rewards phase, discover which exercise to do, how much weight to lift, and how many repetitions to complete to beat their personal best. Finally, the data users enter when they complete an exercise improves the service and loads the next external trigger, thus perpetuating the habit of using the app.

Does your users’ internal trigger frequently prompt them to action? Is your external trigger cueing them when they are most likely to act? Is your design simple enough to make taking the action easy? Does the reward satisfy your users’ need while leaving them wanting more? Do your users invest a bit of work in the product, storing value to improve the experience with use and loading the next trigger?

The initial question for Habit Testing is “Who are the product’s habitual users?” Remember, the more frequently your product is used, the more likely it is to form a user habit.

Let’s say that you’ve identified a few users who meet the criteria of habitual users. Yet how many such users are enough? My rule of thumb is 5 percent. Though your rate of active users will need to be much higher to sustain your business, this is a good initial benchmark.

You are looking for a Habit Path—a series of similar actions shared by your most loyal users. For example, in its early days, Twitter discovered that once new users followed thirty other members, they hit a tipping point that dramatically increased the odds they would keep using the site.1 Every product has a different set of actions that devoted users take; the goal of finding the Habit Path is to determine which of these steps is critical for creating devoted users so that you can modify the experience to encourage this behavior.

The Hooked Model helps the product designer generate an initial prototype for a habit-forming technology. It also helps uncover potential weaknesses in an existing product’s habit-forming potential. Once a product is built, Habit Testing helps uncover product devotees, discover which product elements (if any) are habit forming, and why those aspects of your product change user behavior. Habit Testing includes three steps: identify, codify, and modify. First, dig into the data to identify how people are using the product. Next, codify these findings in search of habitual users. To generate new hypotheses, study the actions and paths taken by devoted users. Finally, modify the product to influence more users to follow the same path as your habitual users, and then evaluate results and continue to modify as needed. Keen observation of one’s own behavior can lead to new insights and habit-forming product opportunities. Identifying areas where a new technology makes cycling through the Hooked Model faster, more frequent, or more rewarding provides fertile ground for developing new habit-forming products.

Nascent behaviors—new behaviors that few people see or do, yet ultimately fulfill a mass-market need—can inform future breakthrough habit-forming opportunities. New interfaces lead to transformative behavior change and business opportunities.

We believe that the Bible is a way God speaks to us,” Gruenewald says. “When people see a verse, they see wisdom or truth they can apply to their lives or a situation they’re going through.” Skeptics might call this subjective validation, and psychologists term it the Forer effect, but to the faithful it amounts to personally communicating with God.

As for my own reward, after finishing my verse, I received affirmation from a satisfying “Day Complete!” screen. A check mark appeared near the scripture I had read and another one was placed on my reading plan calendar. Skipping a day would mean breaking the chain of checked days, employing the endowed progress effect (previously discussed in chapter 3)—a tactic also used by video game designers to encourage progression.

To help spread the app, a new verse greets the reader on the first page. Below the verse a large blue button reads “Share Verse of the Day.” One click and the daily scripture is blasted to Facebook or Twitter.

in a positive light, also known as the humblebrag.4 A Harvard meta-analysis, “Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding,” found the act “engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward.”5 In fact, sharing feels so good that one study found “individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self.

Using the Bible App at church not only has the benefit of driving growth, it also builds commitment. Every time users highlight a verse, add a comment, create a bookmark, or share from the app, they invest in it.

REMEMBER & SHARE The Bible App was far less engaging as a desktop Web site; the mobile interface increased accessibility and usage by providing frequent triggers. The Bible App increases users’ ability to take action by front-loading interesting content and providing an alternative audio version. By separating the verses into small chunks, users find the Bible easier to read on a daily basis; not knowing what the next verse will be adds a variable reward. Every annotation, bookmark, and highlight stores data (and value) in the app, further committing users.

Americans spend $19 billion annually on gym memberships.6 Unfortunately, while many people join gyms, few use them for long. According to the Fitness Industry Association, about 44 percent of people who sign up for a gym membership quit after just six months.7

Yet talking to users to reveal these wants will likely prove ineffective because they themselves don’t know which emotions motivate them.

Unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40.

Fundamentally, variable reward systems must satisfy users’ needs while leaving them wanting to reengage. As described, the most habit-forming products and services utilize one or more of the three variable rewards types: the tribe, the hunt, and the self. In fact, many habit-forming products offer multiple variable rewards.

However, simply giving users what they want is not enough to create a habit-forming product. The feedback loop of the first three steps of the Hook—trigger, action, and variable reward—still misses a final critical phase. In the next chapter we will learn how getting people to invest their time, effort, data, or social equity in your product is a requirement for repeat use.

Variable reward is the third phase of the Hooked 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 fueled 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 behavior. Psychologists refer to this as reactance. Maintaining a sense of user autonomy and trust is a requirement for sustained 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. DO

Rewards must fit into the narrative of why the product is used and align with the user’s internal triggers and motivations. They must ultimately improve the user’s life.

external triggers can also convey implicit information about the next desired user action. For example, we’ve all learned that Web site links are for clicking and app icons are for tapping. The only purpose for these common visual triggers is to prompt the user to action.

We often think the Internet enables you to do new things . . . But people just want to do the same things they’ve always done.

As David Skok, tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, points out, “The most important factor to increasing growth is . . . Viral Cycle Time.”7 Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and it can have a massive impact. “For example, after 20 days with a cycle time of two days, you will have 20,470 users,” Skok writes. “But if you halved that cycle time to one day, you would have over 20 million users! It is logical that it would be better to have more cycles occur, but it is less obvious just how much better.

A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of discomfort. The sensation is similar to an itch, a feeling that manifests within the mind until it is satisfied. The habit-forming products we use are simply there to provide some sort of relief. Using a technology or product to scratch the itch provides faster satisfaction than ignoring it. Once we come to depend on a tool, switching to something else takes work.

I propose that variable rewards come in three types: the tribe, the hunt, and the self. Habit-forming products utilize one or more of these variable reward types. Rewards of the Tribe We are a species that depends on one another. Rewards of the tribe, or social rewards, are driven by our connectedness with other people. Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.

REMEMBER & SHARE The investment phase is the fourth step in the Hooked 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 behaviors, 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 Endowed Progress Effect

Two groups of customers were given punch cards awarding a free car wash once the cards were fully punched. One group was given a blank punch card with eight squares; the other was given a punch card with ten squares that came with two free punches. Both groups still had to purchase eight car washes to receive a free wash; however, the second group of customers—those that were given two free punches—had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate.

The second step in the Hooked Model 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.

The results showed that reciprocation is not just a characteristic expressed between people, but also a trait observed when humans interact with machines.

Cognitive psychologists define habits as “automatic behaviors triggered by situational cues”:

The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.

More recent experiments reveal that variability increases activity in the nucleus accumbens and spikes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, driving our hungry search for rewards.

Stack Overflow devotees write responses in anticipation of rewards of the tribe. Each time a user submits an answer, other members have the opportunity to vote the response up or down. The best responses percolate upward, accumulating points for their authors (figure 19). When they reach certain point levels, members earn badges, which confer special status and privileges.

Habits are defined as “behaviors done with little or no conscious thought.” The convergence of access, data, and speed is making the world a more habit-forming place.

how to build products to help people do the things they already want to do but, for lack of a well-designed solution, don’t do.

Hauptly deconstructs the process of innovation into its most fundamental steps. First, Hauptly states, understand the reason people use a product or service. Next, lay out the steps the customer must take to get the job done. Finally, once the series of tasks from intention to outcome is understood, simply start removing steps until you reach the simplest possible process. Consequently, any technology or product that significantly reduces the steps to complete a task will enjoy high adoption rates by the people it assists. For Hauptly, easier equals better.

Companies that form strong user habits enjoy several benefits to their bottom line. These companies attach their product to internal triggers. As a result, users show up without any external prompting.

Today, small start-up teams can profoundly change behavior by guiding users through a series of experiences I call hooks. The more often users run through these hooks, the more likely they are to form habits.

For Hauptly, easier equals better.

Most important, could the same forces that made these experiences so compelling also be used to build products to improve people’s lives?

began blogging about what I learned at NirAndFar.com, and my essays were syndicated to other sites. Readers soon began writing in with their own observations and examples.

Through consecutive Hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging

However, industry insiders believe that number is closer to an astounding 150 daily sessions.4 Face it: We’re hooked.

the job of companies operating in conditions of inherent variability is to give users what they desperately crave in conditions of low control—a sense of agency.

The book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, was a Wall Street Journal best seller

However, one aspect is common to all successful innovations—they solve problems. That may seem obvious, but understanding the kind of problem a new product solves can be a topic of much debate. “Are you building a vitamin or painkiller?” is a common, almost clichéd question many investors ask founders eager to cash their first venture capital check. The correct answer, from the perspective of most investors, is the latter: a painkiller. Likewise, innovators in companies big and small are constantly asked to prove their idea is important enough to merit the time and money needed to build it. Gatekeepers such as investors and managers want to invest in solving real problems or meeting immediate needs by backing painkillers. Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain, and often have quantifiable markets.

Whys

multi-screen world of ad-wary consumers has rendered Don Draper’s big budget brainwashing useless to all but the biggest brands.

Tinder quickly captured the attention of millions of people looking for love with a simple interface, generating 3.5 million matches from 350 million swipes each day.[cx]

A need to share good news can also be thought of as an attempt to find and maintain social connections.

Fostering consumer habits is an effective way to increase the value of a company by driving higher customer lifetime value (CLTV). CLTV is the amount of money made from a customer before she switches to a competitor, stops using the product, or dies. User habits increase how long and how frequently customers use a product, resulting in higher CLTV. 

1. Trigger A trigger is the actuator of behavior — the spark plug in the engine. Triggers come in two types: external and internal.[viii] Habit-forming products start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a website link, or the app icon on a phone.

2. Action Following the trigger comes the action: the behavior done in anticipation of a reward. The simple action of clicking on the interesting picture in her newsfeed takes Barbra to a website called Pinterest,

the art and science of usability design to reveal how products drive specific user actions. Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occurring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it.[x]

3. Variable Reward What distinguishes the Hook Model from a plain vanilla feedback loop is the hook’s ability to create a craving. Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The unsurprising response of your fridge light turning on when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix — say a different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it — and voila, intrigue is created.

Research shows that levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward.[xi] Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a focused state, which suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and desire.[xii] Although classic examples include slot machines and lotteries, variable rewards are prevalent in many other habit-forming products.

4. Investment The last phase of the Hook Model is where the user does a bit of work. The investment phase increases the odds that the user will make another pass through the hook cycle in the future. The investment occurs when the user puts something into the product of service such as time, data, effort, social capital, or money. However, the investment phase isn’t about users opening up their wallets and moving on with their day. Rather, the investment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all investments users make to improve their experience. These commitments can be leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with every pass through the hook cycle.

- Habits are defined as behaviors done with little or no conscious thought. - The convergence of access, data, and speed is making the world a more habit-forming place. - Businesses that create customer habits gain a significant competitive advantage. - The Hook 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.

Warren Buffett once said, “You can determine the strength of a business over time by the amount of agony they go through in raising prices.

as customers form routines around a product, they come to depend upon it and become less price-sensitive.

in the free-to-play video game business, it is standard practice for game developers to delay asking users to pay money until they have played consistently and habitually. Once the compulsion to play is in place and the desire to progress in the game increases, converting users into paying customers is much easier. Selling virtual items, extra lives, and special powers is where the real money lies.

Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin shared some revealing insights about how the company turns non-paying users into revenue generating ones.[xxiii] In 2011, Libin published a chart now known as the “smile graph.” With the percentage of sign-ups represented on the Y-axis and time spent on the service on the X-axis, the chart showed that, although usage plummeted at first, it rocketed upward as people formed a habit of using the service. The resulting down and up curve gave the chart its emblematic smile shape (and Evernote’s CEO a matching grin). In addition, as usage increased over time, so did customers’ willingness to pay. Libin noted that after the first month, only 0.5 percent of users paid for the service; however, this rate gradually increased. By month 33, 11 percent of users had started paying. At month 42, a remarkable 26 percent of customers were paying for something they had previously used for free.

Users who continually find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it. Frequent usage creates more opportunities to encourage people to invite their friends, broadcast content, and share through word-of-mouth. Hooked users become brand evangelists — megaphones for your company, bringing in new users at little or no cost. Products with higher user engagement also have the potential to grow faster than their rivals.

Facebook’s success was, in part, a result of what I call the more is more principle — more frequent usage drives more viral growth.

The most important factor to increasing growth is ... Viral Cycle Time.”[xxv] Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and it can have a massive impact. “For example, after 20 days with a cycle time of two days, you will have 20,470 users,

Having a greater proportion of users returning to a service daily, dramatically increases Viral Cycle Time for two reasons: First, daily users initiate loops more often (think tagging a friend in a Facebook photo); second, more daily active users means more people to respond and react to each invitation.

User habits are a competitive advantage. Products that change customer routines are less susceptible to attacks from other companies.

Hooked seeks to unleash the tremendous new powers innovators and entrepreneurs have to influence the everyday lives of billions of people.

79 percent of smartphone owners check their device within 15 minutes of waking up every morning.[i] Perhaps more startling, fully one-third of Americans say they would rather give up sex than lose their cell phones.[ii] A 2011 university study suggested people check their phones 34 times per day.

In order to win the loyalty of their users and create a product that’s regularly used, companies must learn not only what compels users to click, but also what makes them tick.

How can a website make browsing easier? One solution popularized by digital pinboard site, Pinterest, is the infinite scroll. In the past, getting from one web page to the next required clicking and waiting. However on sites such as Pinterest, whenever the user nears the bottom of a page, more results automatically load.

Fogg posits that there are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.

Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.

Critics first discounted Twitter’s 140-character message limitation as gimmicky and restrictive. But little did they realize the constraint actually increased users’ ability to create. A few keyboard taps and users were sharing.

For an example of how perception of a limited supply can increase sales, look no further than Amazon.com. My recent search for a DVD revealed there were “only 14 left in stock” (figure 18), while a search for a book I’ve had my eye on says only three copies remain. Is the world’s largest online retailer almost sold out of nearly everything I want to buy or are they using the scarcity heuristic to influence my buying behavior?

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. A question comes to mind and before searching their brains, they query Google. The first-to-mind solution wins.

Over time, Barbra associates Facebook with her need for social connection.

Habits are one of the ways the brain learns complex behaviors. Neuroscientists believe habits give us the ability to focus our attention on other things by storing automatic responses in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain associated with involuntary actions.

Some products have a very high CLTV. For example, credit card customers tend to stay loyal for a very long time and are worth a bundle. Hence, credit card companies are willing to spend a considerable amount of money acquiring new customers. This explains why you receive so many promotional offers, ranging from free gifts to airline bonus miles, to entice you to add another card or upgrade your current one. Your potential CLTV justifies a credit card company’s marketing investment.

But at its core, Instagram is an example of an enterprising team — conversant in psychology as much as technology — that unleashed a habit-forming product on users who subsequently made it a part of their daily routines.

Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions.[7]

Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products

on sites such as Pinterest, whenever the user nears the bottom of a page, more results automatically load. Users never have to pause as they continue scrolling through pins or posts without end

influencing behavior by reducing the effort required to perform an action is more effective than increasing someone’s desire to do it. Make your product so simple that users already know how to use it, and you’ve got a winner.

In 2009, the Twitter homepage attempted to boost motivation. But by 2012, Twitter had discovered that no matter how much users knew about the service, driving them to open an account and start following people resulted in much higher engagement.

In 2009, the Twitter homepage attempted to boost motivation. But by 2012, Twitter had discovered that no matter how much users knew about the service, driving them to open an account and start following people resulted in much higher engagement. Recently, Twitter’s homepage has been modified slightly to encourage downloading of the company’s mobile apps (figure 17). The simplicity of the large sign-in or sign-up triggers on the 2012 version remain, but Twitter now knows that driving users to install the app on their phones leads to the highest rates of repeat engagement.

There are many counterintuitive and surprising ways companies can boost users’ motivation or increase their ability by understanding heuristics — the mental shortcuts we take to make decisions and form opinions. It is worth mentioning a few of these brain biases. Even though users are often unaware of these influences on their behavior, heuristics can predict their actions.

In 1975, researchers Worchel, Lee, and Adewole wanted to know how people would value cookies in two identical glass jars.[lxiii] One jar held ten cookies while the other contained just two stragglers. Which cookies would people value more? While the cookies and jars were identical, participants valued the ones in the near-empty jar more highly. The appearance of scarcity affected their perception of value.

a product can decrease in perceived value if it starts off as scarce and becomes abundant.

The Framing Effect Context also shapes perception. In a social experiment, world-class violinist Joshua Bell decided to play a free impromptu concert in a Washington, DC subway station.[lxiv] Bell regularly sells out venues such as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall for hundreds of dollars per ticket, but when placed in the context of the DC subway, his music fell upon deaf ears. Almost nobody knew they were walking past one of the most talented musicians in the world.

People often anchor to one piece of information when making a decision. I almost bought the shirts on sale assuming that the one feature differentiating the two brands — the fact that one was on sale and the other was not — was all I needed to consider.

Stephen Anderson, author of Seductive Interaction Design, created a tool called Mental Notes to help designers build better products through heuristics.[lxviii] Each of the cards in his deck of 50 contains a brief description of a cognitive bias and is intended to spark product team conversations around how they might utilize the principle.

Remember and Share - Action is the second step in The Hook. - The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward. - As described by the Dr. BJ 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, then increase ability by making the action easier to do, and finally align with the right motivator. - Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure or 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.

Remember and Share - Action is the second step in The Hook. - The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward. - As described by the Dr. BJ 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, then increase ability by making the action easier to do, and finally align with the right motivator. - Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure or 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.   *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Walk through the path your users would take to use your product or service, beginning from the time they feel their internal trigger to the point where they receive their expected outcome. How many steps does it take before users obtain the reward they came for? How does this process compare with the simplicity of some of the examples described in this chapter? How does it compare with competing products and services? - Which resources are limiting your users’ ability to accomplish the tasks that will become habits? - Time - Money - Physical effort - Brain cycles (too confusing) - Social deviance (outside the norm) - Non-routine (too new) - Brainstorm three testable ways to make the intended tasks easier to complete. -  Consider how you might apply heuristics to make habit-forming actions more likely.

Adding variability increased the frequency of the pigeons completing the intended action. Skinner’s pigeons tell us a great deal about what helps drive our own behaviors. More recent experiments reveal that variability increases activity in the nucleus accumbens and spikes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, driving our hungry search for rewards.[lxxiv] Researchers observed increased dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens in experiments involving monetary rewards as well as in a study of heterosexual men viewing images of attractive women’s faces.[lxxv] Variable rewards can be found in all sorts of products and experiences that hold our attention. They fuel our drive to check email, browse the web, or bargain-shop. I propose that variable rewards come in three types: Tribe, hunt and self (figure 20). Habit-forming products utilize one or more of these variable reward types.

users must come to depend on the product as a reliable solution to their problem — the salve for the itch they came to scratch. The third step in the Hook Model is the Variable Reward phase. In this phase, you reward your users by solving a problem, reinforcing their motivation for the action taken in the previous phase.

test subjects played a gambling game while Knutson and his team looked at which areas of their brains became more active. The startling results showed that the nucleus accumbens was not activating when the reward (in this case a monetary payout) was received, but rather, in anticipation of it. The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward. The stress of desire in the brain appears to compel us, just as it did in Olds’ and Milner’s lab mouse experiments.

Researchers believe laughter may in fact be a release valve when we experience the discomfort and excitement of uncertainty, but without fear of harm.

The child has learned to predict the dog’s behavior and no longer finds the pup quite as entertaining. By now, the child’s mind is occupied with dump trucks, fire engines, bicycles, and new toys that stimulate the senses — until they too become predictable. Without variability, we are like children in that once we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited by the experience. The same rules that apply to puppies also apply to products. To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.

when something breaks the cause-and-effect pattern we've come to expect — when we encounter something outside the norm — we suddenly become aware of it again.[lxxii] Novelty sparks our interest, makes us pay attention, and — like a baby encountering a friendly dog for the first time — we seem to love it.

Facebook provides numerous examples of variable social rewards. Logging-in reveals an endless stream of content friends have shared, comments from others, and running tallies of how many people have “liked” something (figure 21). The uncertainty of what users will find each time they visit the site creates the intrigue needed to pull them back again. While variable content gets users to keep searching for interesting tidbits in their Newsfeeds, a click of the “Like” button provides a variable reward for the content’s creators. “Likes” and comments offer tribal validation for those who shared the content, and provide variable rewards that motivate them to continue posting.

Stack Overflow’s content is created voluntarily by people who use the site. A staggering 5,000 answers to questions are generated per day by site members.

Stack Overflow devotees write responses in anticipation of rewards of the tribe. Each time a user submits an answer, other members have the opportunity to vote the response up or down.

Of course, the process of accumulating upvotes (and, therefore, points and badges) is highly variable — no one knows how many they will receive from the community when responding to a question. 

League of Legends has become well known for at least two things: proving the power of the free-to-play model in the West and a vicious player community.”[lxxix] To combat the trolls, the game creators designed a reward system leveraging Bandura’s social learning theory, which they called Honor Points (figure 23). The system gave players the ability to award points for particularly sportsmanlike conduct worthy of recognition. These virtual kudos encouraged positive behavior and helped the best and most cooperative players to stand out in the community. The number of points earned was highly variable and could only be conferred by other players. Honor Points soon became a coveted marker of tribe-conferred status and helped weed out trolls by signaling to others which players should be avoided.

Rewards of the Tribe We are a species that depends on each other. Rewards of the tribe, or social rewards, are driven by our connectedness with other people. Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.

With every post, tweet, or pin, users anticipate social validation. Rewards of the tribe keep users coming back, wanting more. Sites that leverage tribal rewards benefit from what psychologist Albert Bandura called “social learning theory.”[lxxvi] Bandura studied the power of modeling and ascribed special powers to our ability to learn from others. In particular, Bandura showed that people who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behavior are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions. Notably, Bandura also showed that this technique works particularly well when people observe the behavior of people most like themselves, or those who are slightly more experienced (and, therefore, role models).[lxxvii] This is exactly the kind of targeted demographic and interest-level segmentation that social media companies such as Facebook and industry-specific sites such as Stack Overflow selectively apply.

As recent history of the web demonstrates, the ease or difficulty of doing a particular action impacts the likelihood that a behavior will occur. To successfully simplify a product, we must remove obstacles that stand in the user’s way.

According to the Fogg Behavior Model, ability is the capacity to do a particular behavior.   *** Fogg describes six “elements of simplicity” — the factors that influence a task’s difficulty.[lxi] These are:   - Time - How long it takes to complete an action. - Money - The fiscal cost of taking an action. - Physical Effort - The amount of labor involved in taking the action. - Brain Cycles - The level of mental effort and focus required to take an action. - Social Deviance - How accepted the behavior is by others. - Non-Routine - According to Fogg, “How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.

identify what the user is missing. What is making it difficult for the user to accomplish the desired action? Is the user short on time? Is the behavior too expensive? Is the user exhausted after a long day of work? Is the product too difficult to understand? Is the user in a social context where the behavior could be perceived as inappropriate? Is the behavior simply so far outside of the user’s normal routine that its strangeness is off-putting? These factors will differ by person and context, so designers should ask, "What is the thing that is missing that would allow my users to proceed to the next step?

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.

examples of simple online interfaces used by a number of successful companies to prompt users to move quickly into the Hook’s next phase.

Simply put, Google reduced the amount of time and the cognitive effort required to find what the user was looking for.

Facebook Facebook provides numerous examples of variable social rewards. Logging-in reveals an endless stream of content friends have shared, comments from others, and running tallies of how many people have “liked” something (figure 21). The uncertainty of what users will find each time they visit the site creates the intrigue needed to pull them back again. While variable content gets users to keep searching for interesting tidbits in their Newsfeeds, a click of the “Like” button provides a variable reward for the content’s creators. “Likes” and comments offer tribal validation for those who shared the content, and provide variable rewards that motivate them to continue posting.

By running on two feet and bereft of the body hair typical of other primates, our species gained a massive advantage over larger mammals. Our ability to maintain steady pursuit gave us the capacity to hunt large prehistoric game. But persistence hunting was not only made possible because of our bodies; changes in our brains also played a significant role. During the chase, the runner is driven by the pursuit itself; and this same mental hardwiring also provides clues into the source of our insatiable desires today. The dogged determination that keeps San hunters chasing kudu is the same mechanism that keeps us wanting and buying. Although it is a long way from bushmen to businessmen, the mental processes of the hunt remain largely the same.

The need to acquire physical objects, such as food and other supplies that aid our survival, is part of our brain’s operating system. But where we once hunted for food, today we hunt for other things. In modern society, food can be bought with cash, and more recently by extension, information translates into money. Rewards of the hunt existed long before the advent of computers. But today we find numerous examples of variable rewards associated with the pursuit of resources and information that compel us with the same determination as the San hunter chasing his prey.

Slot machines provide a classic example of variable rewards of the hunt. Gamblers plunk $1 billion per day into slot machines in American casinos, which is a testament to the machines’ power to compel players.[lxxxiv] By awarding money in random intervals, games of chance entice players with the prospect of a jackpot. Of course, winning is entirely outside the gambler’s control — yet the pursuit can be intoxicating.

Twitter The “feed” has become a social staple of many online products. The stream of limitless information displayed in a scrolling interface makes for a compelling reward of the hunt. The Twitter timeline, for example, is filled with a mix of both mundane and relevant content. This variety creates an enticingly unpredictable user experience. On occasion a user might find a particularly interesting piece of news, while other times, she won’t. But to keep hunting for more information, all that is needed is a flick of the finger or scroll of a mouse. Users scroll and scroll and scroll to search for variable rewards in the form of relevant tweets

Pinterest, a company that has grown to reach over 50 million monthly users worldwide, also employs a feed, but with a visual twist.

Pinterest users never know what they will find on the site. To keep them searching and scrolling, the company employs an unusual design. As the user scrolls to the bottom of the page, some images appear to be cut-off. Often, images appear out of view below the browser fold. However, these images offer a glimpse of what's ahead, even if just barely visible. To relieve their curiosity, all users have to do is scroll to reveal the full picture (figure 25). As more images load on the page, the endless search for variable rewards of the hunt continues.

Rewards of the Self Finally, there are the variable rewards we seek for a more personal form of gratification. We are driven to conquer obstacles, even if just for the satisfaction of doing so. Pursuing a task to completion can influence people to continue all sorts of behaviors.[lxxxvi] Surprisingly, we even pursue these rewards when we don’t outwardly appear to enjoy them. For example, watching someone investing countless hours into completing a tabletop puzzle can reveal frustrated face contortions and even sounds of muttered profanity. Although puzzles offer no prize other than the satisfaction of completion, for some the painstaking search for the right pieces can be a wonderfully mesmerizing struggle.

Video Games Rewards of the self are a defining component in video games, as players seek to master the skills needed to pursue their quest. Leveling up, unlocking special powers, and other game mechanics fulfill a player's desire for competency by showing progression and completion.

Mailbox delivers something other email clients do not — a feeling of completion and mastery.

At first, Mahalo garnered significant attention and traffic. At its high point, 14.1 million users worldwide visited the site monthly.[lxxxix] But over time, users began to lose interest. Although the payout of the bounties were variable, somehow users did not find the monetary rewards enticing enough. But as Mahalo struggled to retain users, another Q&A site began to boom. Quora, launched in 2010 by two former Facebook employees, quickly grew in popularity. Unlike Mahalo, Quora did not offer a single cent to anyone answering user questions. Why, then, have users stayed highly engaged with Quora, but not with Mahalo, despite its variable monetary rewards? In Mahalo’s case, executives assumed that paying users would drive repeat engagement with the site. After all, people like money, right? Unfortunately, Mahalo had an incomplete understanding of its users’ drivers. Ultimately, the company found that people did not want to use a Q&A site to make money. If the trigger was a desire for monetary rewards, the user was better off spending their time earning an hourly wage. And if the payouts were meant to take the form of a game, like a slot machine, then the rewards came far too infrequently and were too small to matter. However, Quora demonstrated that social rewards and the variable reinforcement of recognition from peers proved to be much more frequent and salient motivators. Quora instituted an upvoting system that reports user satisfaction with answers and provides a steady stream of social feedback. Quora’s social rewards have proven more attractive than Mahalo’s monetary rewards. Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behavior.

gamification” — defined as the use of game-like elements in non-gaming environments — has been used with varying success. Points, badges, and leaderboards can prove effective, but only if they scratch the user’s itch. When there is a mismatch between the customer’s problem and the company’s assumed solution, no amount of gamification will help spur engagement.

if the user has no ongoing itch at all — say, no need to return repeatedly to a site that lacks any value beyond the initial visit — gamification will fail because of a lack of inherent interest in the product or service

Variable rewards are not magic fairy dust that a product designer can sprinkle onto a product to make it instantly more attractive. Rewards must fit into the narrative of why the product is used and align with the user's internal triggers and motivations.

Quora found success by connecting the right reward to the intended behavior of asking and answering questions.

While influencing behavior can be a part of good product design, heavy-handed efforts can have adverse consequences and risk losing users’ trust.

As part of a French study, researchers wanted to know if they could influence how much money people handed to a total stranger asking for bus fare by using just a few specially encoded words. They discovered a technique so simple and effective it doubled the amount people gave. The turn of phrase has not only proven to increase how much bus fare people give, but has also been effective in boosting charitable donations and participation in voluntary surveys. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of 42 studies involving over 22,000 participants concluded that these few words, placed at the end of a request, are a highly-effective way to gain compliance, doubling the likelihood of people saying “yes.”[xcii] The magic words the researchers discovered? The phrase, “but you are free to accept or refuse.

If you have ever grumbled at your mother telling you to put on a coat or felt your blood pressure rise when your boss micro-manages you, you have experienced what psychologists call “reactance,” the hair-trigger response to threats to your autonomy. However, when a request is coupled with an affirmation of the right to choose, reactance is kept at bay.

MyFitnessPal and although using the app was novel at first, it soon became a drag. Keeping a food diary was not part of my daily routine and was not something I came to the app wanting to do. I wanted to lose weight and the app was telling me how to do it with its strict method of tracking calories in and calories out.

I have not used Fitocracy for long, but it is easy to see how someone could get hooked. Fitocracy is first and foremost an online community. The app roped me in by closely mimicking real-world gym jabber among friends. The ritual of connecting with like-minded people existed long before Fitocracy, and the company leverages this behavior by making it easier and more rewarding to share encouragement, exchange advice, and receive praise.

Perhaps part of the appeal of sneaking in a few minutes on Facebook or checking scores on ESPN.com is our access to a moment of pure autonomy – an escape from being told what to do by bosses and co-workers.

Unfortunately, too many companies build their products betting users will do what they make them do instead of letting them do what they want to do. Companies fail to change user behaviors because they do not make their services enjoyable for its own sake, often asking users to learn new, unfamiliar actions instead of making old routines easier. Companies that successfully change behaviors present users with an implicit choice between their old way of doing things and a new, more convenient way to fulfill existing needs. By maintaining the users’ freedom to choose, products can facilitate the adoption of new habits and change behavior for good. Whether coerced into doing something we did not intend, as was the case when Quora opted-in all users to its “views” feature, or feeling forced to adopt a strange new calorie counting behavior on MyFitnessPal, people often feel constrained by threats to their autonomy and rebel. To change behavior, products must ensure the users feel in control. People must want to use the service, not feel they have to.

Although Breaking Bad owes a great deal of its success to its talented cast and crew, fundamentally the program utilized a simple formula to keep people tuning in. At the heart of every episode — and also across each season’s narrative arc — is a problem the characters must resolve. For example, during an episode in the first season, Walter White must find a way to dispose of the bodies of two rival drug dealers. Challenges prevent resolution of the conflict and suspense is created as the audience waits to find out how the storyline ends. In this particular episode, White discovers one of the drug dealers is still alive and is faced with the dilemma of having to kill someone he thought was already dead. Invariably, each episode’s central conflict is resolved near the end of the show, at which time a new challenge arises to pique the viewer’s curiosity. By design, the only way to know how Walter gets out of the mess he is in at the end of the latest episode is to watch the next episode.     The cycle of conflict, mystery and resolution is as old as storytelling itself, and at the heart of every good tale is variability. The unknown is fascinating and strong stories hold our attention by waiting to reveal what happens next. In a phenomenon called “experience-taking,

As we step into the character’s shoes we experience his or her motivations — including the search for rewards of the tribe, hunt and self. We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us.

By March 2012, Zynga’s stock was flying high and the company was valued at over $10 billion. But by November of that same year, the stock was down over 80 percent. It turned out that Zynga’s new games were not really new at all. The company had simply re-skinned FarmVille, and soon players had lost interest and investors followed suit. What was once novel and intriguing became rote and boring. The “Villes” had lost their variability, and with it, their viability. As the Zynga story demonstrates, an element of mystery is an important component of continued user interest.  Online games like FarmVille suffer from what I call “finite variability” — an experience that becomes predictable after use.

Experiences with finite variability become less engaging because they eventually become predictable. Businesses with finite variability are not inferior per se, they just operate under different constraints. They must constantly churn out new content and experiences to cater to their consumers’ insatiable desire for novelty.

companies making products exhibiting “infinite variability” — experiences that maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use. For example, games played to completion offer finite variability while those played with others people have higher degrees of infinite variability because the players themselves alter the game-play throughout. World of Warcraft, the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, still captures the attention of more than 10 million active users eight years after its first release.

While content consumption, like watching a TV show, is an example of finite variability, content creation is infinitely variable.

people’s “declared preferences” — what they say they want — are far different from their “revealed preferences” — what they actually do.