Book review: HOOKED
How to build habit-forming products
Genres:
- Psychology,
- Business,
- Behavioral Economics,
- Design
Review posted on:
24.07.2017
The number of pages:
256 pages
Book rating:
3/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2014
Who should read this book:
- Product Managers, UX Designers, Marketers, Start-up founders, Entrepreneurs, and People in sales.
A short summary of the book:
The concept of the hook model is the four stages that systematically take advantage of how we think and react. So the first stage of the hook model is the triggers – which are internal or external, and they invoke in us an action. Action is the next stage of the hook model and for this stage to be an effective one it has to be as simple as possible, or it has to feel natural to the target person. Otherwise, there is no chance a habit will form and your product/service will not catch on. The third stage is a reward for the action our target person made. The reward has to be variable, so the target person will not know what he/she will get, they just know they will get something and that builds anticipation (hooking them). The final phase in the hook model is the investment of the target person. For the habit to be formed our target person has to invest time and effort for them to feel ownership of the product or service they just used. An excellent example of this is IKEA (the IKEA effect), where customers have to assemble their bought furniture by themselves, and in doing so they value it more. And now that you have finished the first “circle” of the hook model just repeat it step by step until your target person is hooked.
My notes from the book:
- Cognitive psychologists define a habit as “Automatic behaviors triggered by situational cues.”
- The products and services we use habitually alter our everyday behavior, just as their designers intended. Our actions have been engineered.
- Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create.
- The brain automatically deduces that if the decision was a good one yesterday, then it is a safe bet again today and the actions become a routine.
- Fostering consumer habits is an effective way to increase the value of a company by driving higher customer lifetime value. User habits increase how long and how frequently customers use a product.
- The habits you’ve most recently acquired are also the ones most likely to go soonest. People rarely change their habits for long.
- When we change our routines, neural pathways remain etched in our brains, ready to be reactivated when we lose focus.
- Behavior that occurs with enough frequency and perceived utility enter the habit zone, making it a default behavior. If either of these two factors falls short it is less likely the desired behavior will become a habit.
- Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse – abandonment. Reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring unconsciously.
- Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers and greatly influence our daily routines.
- When creating a product the company must first identify the particular frustration or pain point in emotional terms, rather than product features.
- When creating your product/service focus on what people actually do rather than what they wish they did. Ask yourself what pain their current habits solve and what the user might be feeling right before one of these actions.
- External triggers tell the user what to do next by placing information within the user’s environment. Internal triggers tell the users what to do next through associations stored in the user’s memory.
- Three ingredients are required to initiate any and all behaviors: The user must have sufficient motivation. The user must have the ability to complete the desired action. And triggers must be present to activate the behavior.
- All humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.
- Influencing behavior by reducing the effort required to perform an action is more effective than increasing someone’s desire to do it.
- When using punch cards to encourage repeat business try giving out cards with some progress. People will feel a bigger want and need to fill the card and get the reward.
- What draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.
- We are like children in that once we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited by the experience. To hold our attention a product must have an ongoing degree of novelty.
- Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.
- The need to feel social connectedness shapes our values and drives much of how we spend our time.
- People who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behavior are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions.
- Telling people they are free to choose disarms their instinctive rejection of being told what to do.
- Too many companies build their products betting users will do what they make them do instead of letting them do what they want to do.
- The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it.
- The timing of asking for user investment is critically important. Ask for investment after users have received variable rewards.
- Once users have invested the effort to acquire a skill, they are less likely to switch to a competing product.
- The humblebrag – disclosing information about the self (what you did, read, have been, achieved,…) is intrinsically rewarding. This act engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward.
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