Nir Eyal Hooked Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.