Book Notes Hooked By Nir Eyal
Book Notes: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
I was recently given a task to power through some books. For both personal retention and public good, I thought I’d borrow a dance move from Derek Sivers and keep public notes on them. These notes will be updated when I push to the blog and will follow along with me in the book. When I finish a book, I’ll try and do some big takeaways.
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“Amassing millions of users is no longer enough. Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create.” pg 2
This caught my eye, but I’m up in the air about the universality of it at this point. This might be more true for companies that take percentages (ride sharing, transactions) than companies who survive on ad revenue (Facebook, Twitter). Google seems to the be an exception. Happy to be prove wrong about that (which, presumably is what this book will do.) </>
The Hook Model
Trigger (internal/ external), Action, Variable, Reward. </>
“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.” Pg 8
🤔 </>
“Research shows that levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward. Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a focused state, which suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating parts associated with wanting and desire.” pg 8-9
Wow. The “loot box” phenomenon that’s being integrated into all aspects of games makes a lot of sense given this research. This might also be why games RPG’s are so compelling in the first place. Here’s an article from Cracked about this specifically.
“Recently, a blog reader emailed me, “If it can’t be used for evil, it’s not a superpower.”” pg 11
Whoa. </>
“Habit forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement.” pg 17
I can’t help but think of this in terms of software that allow for short cutting workflows in favor of efficiency. I still reach for my Alfred snippets, and remember my Front workflows quite well. It seems like software used to create habit by simplifying process is perhaps trying to do the same thing. </>
“A business is worth the sum of its future profits. -pg 19”
A succinct summary </>
• Fostering habits creates a higher Customer Lifetime Value. pg. 19
“Users who continuously find value in a product are more likely to tell their friends about it.” pg. 21 “
For books about WOMM, I’d recommend Fizz by Ted Wright and checking out Ted on Twitter. </>
“To borrow a term from accounting, behaviors are LIFO – “Last in, first out.” In other words, the habits you’ve most recently acquired “
“Are you building a vitamin or a painkiller.” pg. 32
ie; does this solve a problem, or does it satisfy you in some other way. </>
“Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers and greatly influence our daily routines. Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation.” pg. 48
YEP. This reminds of me of something Jason Pargin (aka Cracked’s David Wong) talks about on a couple of episodes of the Cracked podcast. How social apps are altering our brain chemistry to receive little dopamine hits from apps. The idea of these boredom triggers cycling into dopamine drops from the app use cements the process even more.
I first heard the idea from Tim Ferriss, but here’s a video talking about how to break cell phone addiction, and one of many articles talking about how boredom can be a good thing.. </>
“Products that successfully create habits sooth the user’s pain by laying claim to a particular feeling. To do so, product designers must know their users internal triggers––that is, the pain they seek to solve…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.” pg. 51-52
• Lots of really good points about “declared preferences” vs. “revealed preferences”. What people say they want vs. what they actually do. I imagine this is what a lot of the fitness tracking industry is banking on. They don’t necessarily care if people lose weight, they want to sell them the satisfaction of feeling like they’re actively working on their weight. I suppose in this way they’re “vitamin” products.
This also ties into the idea of moral licensing (here’s Gladwell giving a topical example) and the idea that we justify bad behavior based on past good behavior. The idea being that a fitness band/tracker gives you lots of emotional triggers, AND helps you do the things you want to do (break a diet), while still providing you the comfort of licensing away bad behavior. Pretty compelling.
• Just got an alert from the Hearthstone app on my phone: “A new ranked play season has begun! See how far you can climb this month!” Quite timely.
Reading in Progress….
Best,
Watson