February 2025
Service Design
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While I was a student at Georgia Tech, my classmates and I had a Slack channel exclusively dedicated to sharing helpful UX/Product Design-oriented books. ‘Hooked’ was one of the first books to be shared. Not giving it a ton of thought, I joined the lengthy wait-list at my local library for it and eventually got hold of it almost 10 months later.
One of the opening statistics Nir Eyal shares is that:
“a 2011 university study suggested people check their phones 34 times per day.”
That simple statement left be a bit floored but also prompted me to keep reading. Eyal essentially talks about habit-formation - something I’ve read about in other books (see other blog posts). However, his framework is explained using products (rather than behaviors) as the case studies.
The Hook Model is comprised of four parts:
1. trigger (internal or external) - the actuator of behavior
2. action - behavior done in anticipation of a reward
3. variable reward - creates a craving by manipulating dopamine surges in the brain
4. investment - increases the likelihood that users will make another pass through the cycle
Charles Duhigg: cites in ‘The Power of Habit’ that about 40% of our daily actions are unconscious habits
Nir Eyal: says that closer to half/50% of our daily actions are ‘ingrained habits.’
Either way, in order to make using a product/service/experience a long-time success, it is imperative that they become habitual on some level (increasing CLTV):
“Fostering consumer habits is an effective way to increase the value of a company by driving higher customer lifetime value”
In order to convert customers/users, John Gourville claims that a product must be about 9x better than a previously used alternative; in other words, it has to be really good (higher customer lifetime value, greater pricing flexibility, supercharged growth, and a sharpened competitive edge) to become habit-forming for users.
“The enemy of forming new habits is past behaviors”
Successful products provide solutions to all kinds of problems. Eyal claims that for users to enter the ‘Habit Zone,’ users must perceive a high degree of utility AND do so frequently:
The first step of the ‘Hooked’ Model: triggers.
There are a variety of triggers that exist. Eyal classifies them as being:
1. External:
a) paid triggers - advertising, marketing (these are costly)
b) earned triggers - mentions, viral products (these are difficult to maintain)
c) relationship triggers - word of mouth, electronic invites (requires extreme loyalty)
d) owned triggers - icons, newsletters, updates (can be repetitive)
2. Internal:
“Internal triggers manifest automatically in your mind. Connecting internal triggers with a product is the brass ring of consumer technology.”
In other words, internal triggers vary widely, tend to be based on thoughts/feelings, are more difficult to tap into but they are far more sustainable. Negative emotions (boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, indecisiveness) are powerful internal triggers.
“The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the users’ pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company’s product or service as the source of relief.
The second step of the ‘Hooked’ Model: action.
Dr. B.J. Fogg: there are three ingredients (B=MAT) required to initiate any/all behaviors:
1. users must have sufficient motivation
2. users must have the ability to complete the desired action
3. a trigger must be present to activate the behavior
Case Studies:
1. Twitter: 140 character tweet constraint increased users’ willingness to tweet
2. Google: keyword search reduced time/effort required to find what users were looking for
3. Pinterest: infinite scroll reduced time/clicking
The third step of the ‘Hooked’ Model: variable reward.
Based on psychological research conducted by Brian Knutson, B.F. Skinner and others, we now know that variable rewards are the most long-lasting: areas of the brain (nucleus accumbens) activate in ANTICIPATION of the reward, not when the reward was given.
“Products must have an ongoing degree of novelty: when we figure out what happens next, we become less excited by the experience.”
Three types of variable rewards:
1. The Tribe - social rewards make us feel accepted, attractive, important and included
a) Facebook likes/comments
2. The Hunt - the need to acquire objects is part of our evolutionary predisposition
a) machine gambling
3. The Self - intrinsic motivation - pursuing something simple for completion can inflate a sense of pride, value
a) video games
The fourth step of the ‘Hooked’ Model: investment.
“The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it. In fact, there is sample evidence to suggest that our labor leads to love.”
Investing in products or services is deeply psychological. Eyal provides case studies/examples that state: the more customers user a product, the more time/effort they are investing in it - therefore, the likelihood of them abandoning the product decreases as usage increases.
The IKEA effect: those who invested labor associated greater value with their creations/furniture simply because they had worked on them.
Check out the IKEA Effect article from the Harvard Business School here.
Paul Graham, a silicon valley investor, has stated:
“We haven’t had time to develop societal antibodies to addictive new things.”
Herein lie the ethical takeaways from this book: the manipulation matrix.
The four categories (elaborated):
1. Peddler - tend to lack the empathy/insights needed to create something users truly want
2. Facilitator - fulfill moral obligation of creating something that materially improves lives
3. Dealer - “creating a product that the designer does not believe improves users’ lives and that he himself would not use is called exploitation”
4. Entertainer - keeping up with the ever-changing demands of users
‘Hooked’ ends with:
“Users bear ultimate responsibility for their actions.”
“It will be years, perhaps generations, before society develops the mental antibodies to control new habits; in the meantime many of these behaviors may develop harmful side effects.”
Nir Eyal’s ‘Hooked’ model was undoubtedly an easier way to understand the success of a lot of products - especially digital products. I loved the sequential layout of the book; from a user-experience point of view, he executed his ideas brilliantly. The content of the book was extremely interesting; the idea of the ‘internal trigger’ is something that every designer (in my opinion) should be able to empathize with. At times, the content felt slightly dystopian but I felt as though the end chapters did a superb job at putting them into context in a responsible/ethical way; the manipulation matrix is something that I will hold onto for my entire career.
Given how often I see this book mentioned on various online platforms, I felt it was a design staple that every designer ought to read and now that makes complete sense: I think everyone should give this book a read. In order to be a ‘facilitator,’ a certain amount of self-awareness/understanding is essential in order to be one.
Additionally, I appreciated how often Nir Eyal used very modern case studies when talking about concepts; he often cited Twitter and how the platform has evolved over the last decade or so. Not only were these great examples, but they made the book feel much more interactive than others.
10/10.
