Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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

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