Creating addictive products: Lessons from TikTok’s success

“Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products” is a book by Nir Eyal that explores the psychology and methods behind creating products that form habits in users. The book is based on Eyal’s research and experience in the tech industry, and provides a step-by-step guide for creating habit-forming products.

The book is divided into four sections: “Trigger,” “Action,” “Variable Reward,” and “Investment.” Each section explains one of the four stages of the Hook Model, a framework that Eyal developed to explain how products create habits. Here’s a detailed break down of how it works:

1. TRIGGER – How do you move the user to take action. For a product to become a habit forming there must be an internal trigger.
   • External triggers: Tell the user what to do next. Notification, Ad CTA, Word of mouth.
   • Internal triggers: Triggers using emotions or association. e.g.
2. ACTION
   • Simplest thing the user can do to scratch that itch. – get relief: Pressing the play button, scrolling on Facebook, quick search on google.
     • Motivation, capacity to do the behaviour, the trigger.
   • Worry more about ability. The harder something is to do the less likely they are to do it. 6 factors of ability:
     1. Time
     2. Money
     3. Physical effort
     4. Brain cycles – ease of understand
     5. Social deviance – more likely to do something when they see other people like them do it
     6. non- routine – more likely to do something because we have done it in the past
3. VARIABLE REWARD
   • Leave them wanting more. BF SKINNER (father of Operant Conditioning) found that behaviour followed by pleasant consequences more likely to be repeated that behaviour followed by unpleasant consequences. The rate of response increased when the reward was given was given on a variable schedule of reinforcement.
   • Rewards of the tribe – reinforcement from other people.
   • Rewards of the hunt – slot machine – Everything has a feed. Hunting for interesting content.
   • Rewards of the self – feel good and has this variability. intrinsically pleasurable. the search for mastery, competency, consistency, control. Game Apps – completing the next accomplishment. Checking emails all the time – finishing to do list or clearing through unread emails.
4. (MOST OVERLOOKED) INVESTMENT
   • Invest for a future. Load the next trigger. When you send that message on WhatsApp you don’t get anything but you are loading the next trigger. The reply is the external trigger. The best products don’t win! Its the product that captures the monopoly of the mind.

Throughout the book, Eyal provides examples from popular products and companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to illustrate how the Hook Model can be used in practice. He also provides practical advice and exercises for building habit-forming products, including creating user personas, developing triggers, and testing and iterating on product features. Let’s have a look at how TikTok has perfected the art of the ‘Hook’:

1. TRIGGER – Feeling bored
2. ACTION – Take action on that trigger. Open the app and instantly start swiping up or down.
3. VARIABLE REWARD – Anticipate seeing something that you like rewarding yourself with that piece of content.
4. INVESTMENT – Finish watching the content and hit like, save or follow for more content like this.

Overall, “Hooked” is a valuable resource for anyone interested in creating products that engage and retain users. It provides a clear and actionable framework for understanding how habits are formed, and how to create products that hook users.