Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are two key motivators in all species.

By cycling through successive hooks, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which attach to existing behaviors and emotions. When users start to automatically cue their next behavior, the new habit becomes part of their everyday

explores why some people eventually lose their taste for certain experiences and how variability impacts their retention.

The desire to be entertained can be thought of as the need to satiate boredom.

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.

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

and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett once said, “You can determine the strength of a business over time by the amount of agony

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.

Habit-forming products often start as nice-to-haves (vitamins) but once the habit is formed, they become must-haves (painkillers).