Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products | Hacker News Reader

Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products

hookmodel.com

27 pointsnireyal22 comments

I wrote Hooked along with Ryan Hoover (founder of Product Hunt) to help companies build better products. It's been wonderful seeing how companies have benefited from using the Hook model to create healthy habits.

The book was just named one of the best business books of 2014 by Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-business-books-2...

There's a video of a talk I gave at The Next Web conference on the book here: http://www.hookmodel.com/#book

Happy to hang out and take any questions until about 11 am PT.

what is the biggest change you see in people's mindsets after reading hooked or attending one of your workshops? By people I mean founders or other product people

One of my favorite things to see after a workshop or hear someone tell me after they've read the book is that now they understand what's missing in their product. Finally, they know what to do next! At my last company, we constantly struggled with the question "what should we build? What features matter?" With Hooked, I wanted to make a guide book to help product makers prioritize based on the psychological principles of what drives user engagement.

Hi Nir, since I read the first self-published version I've been seeing applications of the 'Hooked' pattern everywhere - from Meetup groups to college dating to rideshare apps.

Did you see this as a universal pattern, or did you develop it from a specific case and then find that it applied very broadly?

I started out looking for what made technology habit-forming but then the more I dove into the research and the model I started seeing it in all sort of products and experiences.

True for me too. now that whatever task I do or See around I see this 'Hooked' pattern everywhere. Not just tech apps but in real life or non tech products, online offline market.

Hi Nir,

I'm midway through the audiobook now and must say, its really fantastic. So many concepts packed into a relatively short listen. This will probably be something I have to play through a couple of times to even catch a first pass at everything.

My first question is a more technical one, though. The book makes mention to a couple figures. They are described by the narrator, but I was wondering if these were available to audiobook listeners online somewhere. I purchased the book through Audible and got access to your great pack of Extras, too.

More on-topic with the content of the book... Do you think that when forming habits (new service or new users) the synthesized triggers should be purely transactional, or are "digest" newsletters effective as well? By transactional, I mean push notifications, comment reply notifications, and other things that are generated by a user's preferences, connections, etc.

Thanks again for the great resource. Looking forward to continuing the audio book and leveraging the techniques you mention for years to come.

One of the shortcomings of audio books is no appendix. Sorry about that. Write to me through my blog and I'll email it to you: http://www.nirandfar.com/contact

Regarding your question on triggers, when it comes to newsletters, the external trigger is unread email message in your inbox. The "action" then is opening the message to see the "variable reward" inside.

I Have been reading this book and almost completed it. I can say this is a great book and help us focus on right area.

I am been working on a consumer facing product(Social Polling app) and we recently had a initial launch of our mobile android app. When we started on this product we thought of giving out many features at once. But after reading your book the thoughts have become more clearer on how to approach this problem. We started referencing my thoughts with the product related to the core idea. I found voting on questions is a general behaviour of people, when they are provided with some set of options. But creating a Poll and asking a question was not a general behaviour. this has to have some sort of external trigger to make this happen. So We can leverage voting habit and gradually have external triggers so that user starts taking his own polls and asking opinions. Do you this we are moving in right direction?

My guess is that it's not the trigger that's the problem, it's the fact that creating a poll is very hard to do - especially in comparison to just voting. I would find ways to reduce the effort and "cognitive load" of doing the behavior.

Thanks. and yes that is a good point that you make "especially in comparison to just voting it is hard." and the solution for it. I will take this advice and work on it.

I've learned a ton from Nir's writing and talks.

Fun fact: before we published the book Nir had the genius idea of crowdsourcing feedback from his readers. Hundreds of people read a rough draft in Google Doc version, correct (the inevitable) typos and annotating suggestions for improvement. It was a great way to get early feedback before finalizing the book and allow its most dedicated readers to be a part of it. Everyone that helped is listed in the back of the book.

South Park did an episode last night about some of the HOOK model aspects like triggers, rewards and how addictive the new model game developers are using. Found it quite funny and timing is impeccable with your bookrelease. Do you think the hook model should and could be applied more to school? Mostly thinking short term, since alot of students dont see (or believe) the long term rewards.

I wonder if the South Park guys read HOOKED? Wonderful coincidence.

To answer your question, absolutely! Education should be a naturally enjoyable experience but unfortunately institutionalized learning generally squeezes every last drop of pleasure out of it. I'm looking for technology to bring back the hooks that make learning for its own sake fun again.

Nir, thanks for giving us your time. I'm in the process of starting a men's life coaching business and I think some of your concepts may be beneficial in terms of behavior change. How could the model be modified to help people change their habits and adopt new ones? I appreciate your response. Thanks, David

As long as there's a frequently occurring behavior you and your user would like to turn into a habit, I don't see why the Hook model would need to be modified. Same rules apply.

Great, thank you.

Hey Nir, you mentioned at startup grind the promise of wearable devices. Where do you feel the internal/external trigger gap will change greatest once traditional smartphones are eclipsed by different channels of interaction (vibration, physical movement, sounds, etc.)?

It may be a bit counterintuitive but I think the smart watch will help reduce unwanted distraction. I think the buzzes and beeps coming from our watches will be better placed in our lives and since the screen real estate is so much smaller, there will be less room for distracting triggers we don't want. For example, ever look at your phone to check the time only to find yourself pecking at email or Facebook 30 minutes later? That will happen less on our watches now that looking at the time will just be a mater of looking at your watch. Imagine that! Looking at your wrist to check the time! What a novel idea.

Hi guys. Quick question: would you say that building a product around an already established habit (such as watching TV or a particular series) improves the chances of building a successful habit-forming product?

I think so. An internal trigger can also be a routine (such as sitting down to watch TV at the end of the work day.) Connecting to an already established routines is a great place to add new habits assuming that you can effectively cue the user to do the new behavior.

Thanks for the insight. Looking forward to finishing your book.

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