Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal (PDF)

Description

Revised and Updated, Featuring a New Case StudyHow do successful companies create products people can’t put down? Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.Eyal provides readers with:• Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love.• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐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)

⭐As the Information Age continues to unfold and evolve, a few pioneers have effectively captured the intersection of customer psychology and technology. This book is a good overview of how those two elements interact to create a long term customer and product advocate.

⭐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.

⭐The best read so far!!I am applying these hooked model on my product (merce.app). If you’re curious, it’s musical podcast platform that will end the boredom of consuming long form of content 🙂

⭐Love the book.I will readily admit I borrowed “Hooked” from my library first, lately I delved into a couple of hyped books (for more details please see my other reviews) and now got smarter. I don’t buy every book asap. However, after reading halfway through “Hooked” I purchased it because it is fascinating and intelligent on many levels.Browsing through a couple of negative reviews here I noted that somebody mentioned that this book “Hooked” doesn’t provide a perfect blueprint; well, no book ever does. Anybody who believes that is either under the age of 23 or has never tried any business endeavor.What I like about “Hooked” is that author Nir Eyal presents a multi-faceted picture and thinking. He does not have one scenario but explains how the experiences from many fields lead us to a model how we (most likely) can “hook” customers.The book is witty and Eyal brings a lot of obvious examples that make the reader think:”… (p.44) Types of External Triggers: … Imagine if Facebook or Twitter needed to buy an ad to prompt users to revisit their sites–these companies would soon go broke…”It’s a brilliant example. Most of the people who read this book have a presence on either one or both social media sites, hence we can imagine the situation and we can see why “the advertisement model of yore” is not the answer to today’s more complex situation any longer. Opposite to only 25 years ago when running ads on TV or in newspapers was one sure path to success today we have more opportunities hence that old system isn’t working any longer.The book features absolutely fascinating examples.On p. 32 Eyal lays out that today many investors want to know “Are you building a vitamin or a painkiller?” implying, though a “great vitamin” will have many fans and followers who swear by it there will be others who don’t care about living healthy; in contrast, everybody who has pains needs a painkiller whether they like it or not.Eyal makes the reader go through the exercise of pondering if today’s hottest consumer technology companies (FB, Twitter, Instagram etc.) offer vitamins or painkillers. Indeed, though at first it looks as if all of them offer vitamins there are already enough “addicted” people who need “social media site painkillers” to vent, to reaffirm their own worth and so on…It is this interesting and fascinating thinking which I believe to be valuable to all people regardless of whether they are entrepreneurs who want to sell something, or people who work in a steady employment.These days we never know how things are going, hence adding this riveting perspective to one’s thinking can only be extremely beneficial.I also appreciated the detailed list of social media sites and apps mentioned throughout the book. I am one of the people Eyal mentions, people who have reservations to join just any site and build cross connections. Still, learning about Codeacademy, Mahalo, Fitocracy, Any.do, Tinder, and what makes visitors come back to them was extremely interesting,.Recommended with a wholehearted – 5 stars. Now purchased; in fact, I am thinking about getting my two children copies of this book too.Gisela Hausmann, author and Amazon review expert.

⭐This book is aimed at a very narrow sliver of products and the title is way too broad (bait?) I realized this painfully after buying the book and starting reading the first few pages (unfortunately, no try before you buy on amazon for me!). When the back flap says everybody in silicon valley is talking about it – and reading the title it would appear this book applies to all products.Mincing no words, this book is really about messing with your head (the new age fad of companies like facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, and amazon/google as well). The central idea is to play mind games and keep you addicted to services offered by these companies (free ofcourse) and basically raise/tend/ream you in this walled garden keeping you captive (without your acknowledged consent). I recall reading several moons ago how some of the people who were founders of companies of making products have now called time and fear what they have unleashed.Classical marketing has used tools but they never breached the realm of manufacturing consent without your express approval. The ideas presented in print and TV were subtle. What products offered by the said companies are full on invasion of your privacy and your mind. The level to which these companies understand you (and what makes you tick!) is mind boggling.My opinion said (which aligns with the central premise of the book), I am only first couple chapters through and will come update this review in due course.

⭐… your thing is designing products that users can’t tear themselves away from. It feels like it was written before the current brouhaha about social media – the perils thereof. And that’s fine. Designers need to do that and all. I think, though, that I’m at a place where I want to look at tech differently, not in the language of disrupters and innovators and business, but as a thing that adds value – and not social media value – real value to humanity, whether at micro or macro level. I’m not sure this is really the book to give that part of you some cud to chew. But it offers lessons regardless of where your heart lies as a designer or indeed entrepreneur. And, as a slow reader myself, it’s not especially taxing in terms of time taken to read.Plus he goes into some of the BJ Fogg material about behaviour and technology, which I think is handy.Recommend? Yes, to a point. But I think it’s worth reading against some of this stuff too, perhaps balance with a bit of Jaron Lanier or Adam Greenfield or Carl DiSalvo? I reckon that’s the ticket.

⭐This book is largely aimed at entrepreneurs and tech people, for obvious reasons.I however read it as a consumer, who is becoming very mindful of how much tech I consume. So rather than read it as a ‘how to’ guide, I read it as a ‘what to look out for’ guide to make sure I use the internet productively.It didn’t disappoint. It was full of data, yet managed to be a very easy read.The author also spent enough time, for me, discussing the ethics of persuasion for me not to be too concerned that this book will be used for nefarious reasons (though I am sure bad people will be able to use it to create addictive tech).Either way it’s important for the wider world to know these things

⭐This is an excellent primer on the ‘value unit’, the individual nugget that fuels the network effect, and helps explain what makes some products world-beating.Eyal explains how products are addictive, with a simple four-step model:- Trigger -What internal trigger is the product addressing or what external trigger gets the user to the product?- Action – What is the simplest behaviour in anticipation of reward?- Reward – Is the reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more?- Investment – What ‘bit of work’ is done to increase the likelihood of returning?For each stage of the model, there is an explanation of the science behind with some real-world examples of how these are implemented in products we all know.The great news is that the science is simply explained, and not too academic – and at the end of the chapters there is a list of key takeaways coupled with some practical actions you can take to help the design of your product.Later in the book, there is a chapter that deals with the ethical concerns of building an addictive product and an excellent case study of how to apply the theory in a real-world situation.Hooked is concise enough that it can be read in a couple of days, but comprehensive enough that you can walk away with a clear understanding of how products become addictive, and how you can design products that people cannot put down.I’d highly recommend Hooked to anyone that is looking to increase customer engagement with their product.

⭐In this book Nir Eyal provides a simple yet powerful model to help your customers form habits that connect their problems with your solutions.The Hooked model focuses on:An initial ‘trigger’Which drives an ‘action’Where you get a ‘variable reward’Which causes an ‘investment’ due to reciprocationNir provides some fascinating insights into how companies have successfully adopted this model eg. Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Tinder and case studies from The Bible App and Fitbod, where Nir tells his story of the personal benefits he got from Fitbod.Social media companies and video game makers know these tactics already, but Nir wrote this book so everyone can build products that help people do what they really want, but for the lack of good product design, don’t.A must-read for everyone who cares about driving customer engagement.

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