Hooked

Oh my god! I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since the last post I wrote… Like a good friend would say: Un-be-lievable!

Anyway, I have a good reason to write this: I want to get Hooked while reading a book called “Hooked”.

It is all about creating what the author calls habit-forming products. I want to create a habit for myself to share what I learn in the book so I’m going to write my key takeaways for every chapter. Or at least, that’s the intention… Let’s see if I get hooked.

Here we go…

• Habits are defined as “behaviors done with little o no conscious thought”.
• Businesses that create customer habits gain a significant competitive advantage. Like Facebook, how often do you open your facebook without even thinking?
• The Hook Model describes an experience designed to connect the user’s problem to a solution frequently enough to form a habit.
• The Hook Model has four phases:
  • Trigger: Actuator of behavior. They can be external (like a user receiving an adver through Facebook from your website in the right moment) or internal (like a popup message in your app, once the user is in your website already).
  • Action: Following the trigger, the action is what the user does after getting the trigger. She does it because she expects a reward. Design is key here to drive user actions.
  • Variable reward: Predictable feedback loops don’t create desires (everytime you open your fridge you get a feedback, light inside, but it is always the same, therefore it doesn’t create a desire). If we introduce variability in the reward the user gets after the action, this is really powerful in order to create habits (activates areas of the brain that produce dopamine)
  • Investment: This is where the user does more work, user is encouraged to do something (like inviting friend, updating their profile, learning to use new features,…) so that the next trigger will be more engaging, increasing chances of more and more hook cycles.

As part of the book the reader is suggested to perform some exercises if she is trying to create a product. Since this is my case I will share my exercises for the next chapters.

Thanks for reading!