Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

A company can begin to determine its product’s habit-forming potential by plotting two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (how

Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The unsurprising response of your fridge light turning on when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix — say a different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it — and voila, intri

Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions.

Viral Cycle Time.”[25] Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and it can have a massive impact.

Gourville claims that for new entrants to stand a chance, they can’t just be better, they must be nine times better. Why such a high bar? Because old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines. Gourville writes that products that require a high degree of behavior change are do

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, action, variable reward, and investment.

Hooks connect the user’s problem with a company’s solution frequently enough to form a habit.

As we will learn in chapter five, users also increase their dependency on habit-forming products by storing value in them

but there are other things that catch her eye as well. The exciting juxtaposition of relevant and irrelevant, tantalizing and plain, beautiful and common, sets her brain’s dopamine system aflutter with the promise of reward.

Rather, the investment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all investments users make to improve their experience. These commitments can be leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the rewar