Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Unlocking the Science Behind Habitual Products

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2023

"Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" is a deep dive into the psychology and science behind the products and services we can't seem to live without. Nir Eyal, with illustrative examples from Jamie Oliver, presents a compelling framework for understanding how habits are formed and how product designers can build solutions that cater to these ingrained patterns.

Central to the book is the "Hook Model" – a cycle that involves a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and an investment. Eyal meticulously breaks down each component, explaining how successful products seamlessly integrate into this model to drive user engagement and create sticky user experiences.

What sets this book apart is its blend of rigorous academic research with actionable insights for entrepreneurs and product managers. It challenges readers to think critically about the ethical considerations of creating habit-forming products while also offering tools and techniques to ensure that these products genuinely benefit users.

For anyone in the product design and development realm, "Hooked" is an indispensable guide. It offers a fresh perspective on user engagement, helping professionals craft products that not only captivate but also provide lasting value.

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Amazon Customer

Must read for tech entrepreneurs

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2023

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One of the best books I read in a while about how tech companies build their addictive products... and this book will take you through a model which will enable you to build a product that will attract users and let you know what to do to retain them.

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Beqa

Very helpful

Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2023

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Book shares nice psychological tricks to get users attached to you product

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Regina

How to make products with a happy ending

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2013

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When I downloaded the book, the I recalled this quote from Nir Eyal blog, Nir and Far::

"A funny thing happens when you lie to people: they tend to believe. Why shouldn't they? They lie to themselves all the time. Our minds are wired to respond in predictable ways-among them is perceiving the world the way we want to see it, not necessarily the way it is."

Does this book lie? Well Nir gives us facts. He describes the way we reach user hearts and brains, in the same way perhaps Bob Dylan music hooks you on.. What is a Habit? ("automatic behavors triggered by situational cues..things we do with little or no conscious thought"). A habit-forming company, says Nir, links its services to the users' daily routines and emotions.

Nir Eyal teamed with Dr. Baba Shiv to design and teach a course at Stanford Business School, on the science of influencing human behavior. This is how the Hook model was created. It is well described right at the beginning, and each step is analyzed thoroughly in subsequent chapters. Nir dedicated also an entire chapter (#6) to discuss the morality of manipulation. The irresponsible use of habits create bad habits that may degenerate.

This is not the reason the Hooked model in product management was created.

What is CLTV? It stands for customer lifetime value. This is the ammount of money made from "a customer, before she switches to a competitor, or dies". User habits then,, increase the CLTV.

Nir quotes a paper by John Gourville from Harvard Business School "Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old, while companies irrationaly overvsluer the new"

Kindle has this feature that one can see how many people highlighted a paragraph. This quote had 26 highliters in 72 hours. It says why, for new entrants, they can't just do better, they must be nine times better.. Why is this? Because old habits die hard.

Even if "the benefits of using a new product are clear and substantial", if the use of this products require a high degree of behavior change, they are doomed to fail.

To me this is clearest and most lucid explanation on why the attitude "we want to be the best of class" by challenging an existing market leader, aka a "me-too" application fail 98% of the time. It is also why, writes Nir, users did not leave Google to move to Bing in significant numbers.

Nir goes over the Fogg Behavior Model, one of the most lucid model on how to remove obstacles that stand in the way of users adopt a product. The technology to achieve these results are based on the teachings of The Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab which "creates insight into how computing products ... can be designed to change what people believe and what they do."

After at length descriptions of each element of the Hooked habit builduing model, Chapter 6, What are you going to do with all this?" is a must read. Before I wrote this review, I watched the movie "Silver Linings Playbook" where a character named Pat threw away all books that did not have a happy ending (like Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms")

This is why Holywood's movies reach our hearts. We have enough strugles and tensions in our real life. We buy a habit forming product, because we like it. We like the iPods and Androids. We like FB and Google. The book by Nir Eyal teaches us, the product creators, how to make a product with a happy ending for everyone, Thus we elevate the quality of our lives.

16 people found this helpful

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Matthew Menego

Amazing

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2023

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This book is perfect for anyone hoping to start a new app. It helps refine your thought processes to be sucessful. It is to the point and an easy read for any level. A must read for apps.

2 people found this helpful

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Dan O'Brien

Behaviorism for Business

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2016

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Behavior and technology have a tenuous relationship with one another; however, one has always tried to inform the other. Hooked by Nir Eyal presents a very interesting approach to how understanding habit formation (and behavior in general) can be helpful in reaching business-oriented goals for all professional levels. The simple truth is that majority of observable human behavior is primarily an instance of behavior elicited by an antecedent, and then rewarded (or punished). This behavioral relationship, when reinforced over time, becomes a habit. Sounds modest enough. Eyal’s explanation is elegant and easy to understand, centered around four events:

Trigger Behavior
Perform Action
Variable Reward for Action
Commitment to Product
He manages to be both simple and accurate, and still only come in at a little over two hundred pages. It is in the unified and consistent approach to this behavior methodology and how it forms a habit where his content really shines. It should come as no surprise that the behavior model itself harkens back to an operant model of conditioning, but this in no way diminishes Eyal’s approach. His addition is commitment, which is the holy grail for behavior psychologists, as program adherence is difficult to maintain.

Eyal sees this fourth step as an answer to a nebulous question.

Let’s walk through his process. A potential customer is alerted to your service or product by a trigger; the behavior proceeds in short order. This feels firmly rooted in the antecedent-behavior relationship. Then comes the most important part: rewarding the behavior. Behavior psychologists (enthusiasts like myself) always err on the side of intermittent schedules of reinforcements, which is a fancy way of saying you don’t always get the reward, but it is offered frequently enough that the reward is constantly being chased. It is the variability in the reward that gives it real value, as it demonstrates both engagement and authenticity in the process, which then feeds future instances––and on and on it goes.

Habit formation is the key to both delegation and hacking business growth. Learning what behavior relationships are not well formed allows you to free up time accordingly by having an assistant step in with a well-designed process for accomplishing those troublesome behaviors. Eyal offers both a time-saving technique, but also a more nuanced approach to nurturing leads and client relationships in general. The true strong suit of the book is its accessibility, making it a wonderful portal into applied behavior analysis for business. It is truly a well-written resource that both offers useful, actionable information and a contemplative experience for everyday readers on behavior engineering. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you do.

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2 people found this helpful

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ssh87

could have been an essay

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2023

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Trigger, action, reward, investment are the 4 phases. Some good practical tips, but a cliff notes version could deliver 80% of the insights in 20 mins.

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For Entrepreneurs Developing a Product/service

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2018

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One of the most frustrating experiences for an entrepreneur is to create a helpful product that does not get the hoped-for market acceptance. It does not matter how good a product or service is, if users fail to use it, the product/service will languish.

Nir Eyal, author of Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products, provides a scientific based approach to building products that will get used.

The approach – the Hook Model – involves four steps:
Trigger – there needs to be some stimulus that propels the user to take action.

Action – the user must take the action. Here the key is to making the action as simple and as easy as possible. Eliminate as much friction as possible.

Variable Reward – humans are a bit strange. If we know the outcome of a particular action, we tend to get bored. When an action results in a variable reward – think a slot machine – we can become addicted to the action.
Investment – we tend to value what we have invested in. We need to invest some time, effort and money into the product.

Mr. Eyal relies on B J Fogg’s motivational model to explain the requirements for anyone taking action. For those not familiar with Mr. Fogg’s work, this is a good, simple introduction.

The book is well written in a conversational style, quite an easy and quick read. In addition to providing the Hook Model, Mr. Eyal gives specific to do steps, discusses the moral implications of misusing the model and gives some excellent suggestions for testing your product/service against the Hook Model.

If you are struggling to gain market acceptance, this is an excellent tool to test your product. If you want to save time and money on development, follow the Hook Model.

11 people found this helpful

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C. saldivia

Exceeded my Expectations. I was able to create a realistic plan for my own product improvements.

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2019

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Typically, when I read a business book, if I get 5 bullet points of new information, I consider it a worthwhile read. Hooked provided 3 pages of notes and far exceeded my expectations. I was able to create a realistic plan for my own product improvements. Below is a summary of my key take-aways:
1. The Hook Model is a win/win for users and businesses by connecting the user's problem with a company's solution (frequently enough to form a habit).
2. The Hook Model provides a framework for businesses giving them an advantage where ultimately it is hard for customers to switch. The Hook Model increases CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value).
Hooked users become brand evangelists and increase their dependency by storing value in the products
3. 4 Phases (unprompted user engagement brings users back repeatedly):
• Trigger (internal or external) - email, link, app icon -
 External: Tells the user what to do next, too many choices cause abandonment
 Internal: Fear of missing out or losing the moment
• Action - behavior done in anticipation of a reward
 Increase the desired behavior by making the action easier to do
• Variable Reward - feedback loop that creates a craving but is not always predictable (boring), novelty sparks our interest. Need to understand your users to devise appropriate rewards.
• Investment - the user does a bit of work such as time, data, effort, social capital, money (we irrationally value our efforts, if we personally create something, we put a higher value on it). This is about the long-term reward rather than instant gratification. Leverage the users understanding that the services will get better with use.
4. There is a list of "to-dos’" that will help you identify the triggers, actions, rewards and investment for your products.

I strongly suggest you read the book for the rest of the content. It is very well written with real world examples and was very engaging. It is an easy read!

3 people found this helpful

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stonebeast

Wish I would have read this sooner! Is a great read

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2022

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I first read the indistractable to help myself become more focused as I built a startup, and then I read this book. Both are great in their regards, though Hooked is much better as a business book than a self-help book.

This works best when you are designing a product or have one and are ready to make enhancements/changes.
I believe that once you read this book, you can see from his examples and current standards in your own life how the Hooked model is working (or not working) to even better inform you. Remember to ensure you are not a dealer but a facilitator when building your products.

Companies may not come out and say it, but many are following this model or a slight variation of it. (at least the successful ones)

3 people found this helpful

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