Nir Eyal: Hooked

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.

Habits give us the ability to focus our attention to other things by storing automatic responses in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain associated with involuntary actions. 

Habits form when the brain takes a shortcut and stops actively deliberating over what to do next. 

Why habits are good for business:

If our programmed behaviors are so influential in guiding our everyday actions, surely harnessing the same power of habits can be a boon for industry. 

Habit-forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. 

Fostering consumer habits is an effective way to increase the value of a company by driving higher customer lifetime value. 

User habits increase how long and how frequently customers use a product, resulting in a higher lifetime value. 

Habits give companies greater flexibility to increase prices. 

Hooked users become brand evangelists as frequent usage creates more opportunities for customers to invite their friends, broadcast content, and pass on your product via word-of-mouth.  

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

1. Trigger

A trigger is the actuator of behavior - the spark plug in the engine. 

Triggers come in two types: external and internal. 

External triggers: 

External triggers are sensory stimuli which are delivered through any number of things in our environment, and are embedded with information which tells the user what to do next. 

4 types of external triggers...

2. Paid triggers

Advertising, SEO, and other paid channels. Paid triggers are effective, but costly ways of making users purchase. 

3. Earned Triggers

Favorable press mentions, viral videos, and featured placements. This awareness can be quick and effective, yet is usually short-lived. 

4. Relationship Triggers

Word-of-mouth, or social reminders to try or use a product. 

5. Owned triggers

Owned triggers consume a piece of real estate in the users environment. For example, an app icon on the users phone screen, an email newsletter, or a desktop notification. 

Internal triggers:

When a product becomes tightly coupled with a thought, emption, or preexisting routine, it leverages an internal trigger. 

Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers

External triggers create initial interest, then the slow-forming internal triggers create a truly ingrained habit. 

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. 

A powerful internal trigger is the fear of missing out. 

1. Action

Following the trigger comes the action: the behavior done in anticipation of a reward. 

To initiate action, doing must be easier than thinking. A habit is a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. 

The more effort, physical or mental, required to perform the desired action, the less likely it is to occur. 

The Fogg Behavior Model: 

B = MAT

Behavior will occur when Motivation, Ability, and Trigger are present at the same time in sufficient degrees. 

6 elements of simplicity which influence a task's difficulty:

• 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 an 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-how much the action matches or disrupts existing routines. 

Of the three variables of behavior (MAT) invest in Action first. 

4 main heuristics to boost motivation or increase ability:

• The Scarcity Effect

The perception of limited supply can warrant an increase in sales. 

• The Framing Effect

Context also shapes perception. 

• The Anchoring Effect
• The Endowed Progress Effect

People like to make progress, if you have a punch card, you are cognitively obligated to finish it to achieve the reward. Motivation is increased the closer one is to achieving a goal. 

1. Variable Reward

What distinguished 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. 

3 types of reward:

• Rewards of the Tribe

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

• Rewards of the Hunt

The need to acquire physical objects and possessions, such as food and supplies that aid our survival, is part of our brain's operating system. 

• Rewards of the Self

The rewards of self are fueled by "intrinsic motivation", people desire to gain a sense of competency. 

The three forms of reward are made more desirable when offered intermittently. 

The phrase "BUT YOU ARE FREE TO ACCEPT OR REFUSE" doubled the likelihood of compliance when asking for a couple dollars for bus fare. 

Reminding people of their freedom to choose proves effective. 

Experiences with finite variability become less engaging because they eventually become predictable. 

Example of variable reward: Email. 

There is an uncertainty concerning who might be sending us a message. We have a social obligation to respond to emails and desire to be seen as agreeable (rewards of tribe). We may also be curious about what information is in the email. Checking email also informs us of opportunities or threats to our livelihood(rewards of the hunt). Lastly, email in itself is a task - challenging us to sort and act to eliminate unread messages. We feel compelled to gain control over our in-box (reward of self). 

1. 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/service such as time, data, effort, social capital, or money. 

The escalation of commitment is a phenomenon in which we become more likely to put in time or money after we have put in a lot of time and money. 

The consistency principle states that we are likely to act in a congruent way to our past actions. 

Little investments can lead to big changes in future behaviors. 

We avoid cognitive dissonance, to reconcile two conflicting ideas we fictitiously change our perception about one of them. 

Rationalization: this must be worth my money, because I've spent time on it. 

When customers make a purchase, they acknowledge that it is unwise to spend money on something that is not good. So they will justify future purchases from you or of the same type. 

The big idea behind the investment phase is the understanding that the service will get better with use (and personal investment). 

Users are inclined to continue investing into something if it boosts their reputation, and are more likely to stick with whichever service they have invested their efforts into maintain a high-quality score. 

If you build for fame or fortune, you will likely find neither. Build for meaning, though, and you can't go wrong.