What makes for a habit-forming product?

The Oxford Dictionary describes the word “habit” as, “A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.”

In product management, habit-forming products are just that. When you think of building habit-forming products, you’re talking about building user behaviors that are replicable. The requirement for this is simple: offer a solution to a user problem where they find value and keep coming back for more.

That said, users don’t just need another software or product to add to their lives. A lot of product builders forget this and think their product is the ultimate solution and the only thing their users need in their lives. The point is, that the user will only care if it solves a core problem. The job of the product is to get that first win to establish trust and then create a loop with nudges for further engagement.

In this article, you’ll learn more about how you can create habit-forming products by looking at Nir Nyal’s Hook Model and read examples of successful attempts.

Nir Eyals’s Hook Model

If you’ve not read Nir Eyal’s book “The Hook Model,” let me briefly describe what the book says and how you can leverage that concept while you build your product.

In short, habit-forming products successfully create a loop of expected user behavior that solves a user’s key pain point and keeps them returning to the product.

Nir Eyal calls out the four key principles of habit-forming products:

1. Trigger — This is the first nudge or push the product makes and this could be further divided into two parts:
   1. Internal — These are primarily emotions, motivations, boredom, excess or lack of something
   2. External — There could be anything that enchants the external sense like notifications, advertisements, emails etc.
2. Action — What happens after there is an internal or external nudge? You end up acting on it. Think of clicking, swiping, scrolling — essentially, an action to the initial trigger
3. Variable rewards — Once the action has been made, now this is even more important — what’s the outcome you get? Imagine you are handed over a closed wooden box that makes a knocking sound from inside. You open it and find a red balloon. You close it and it knocks again and when you open it, you find a chocolate bar. You continue to do this and you are in a loop of trigger, action and reward. The reward in this case is variable in nature. If you know what reward you’d get, the element of surprise ceases to exist and your internal trigger or motivation wanes down. But if the reward is variable, your curiosity will keep pushing you to make an “action”
4. Investment — This is when you end up willingly investing your time, data, effort or social capital in the product. The more time you spend on the product, the more invested you feel and the loop gets even tighter. You feel like going to the product again and again as a matter of habit and not necessarily to solve any core problem at any point in time

As you might have already realized, there are strong ethical concerns around building habit-forming products that exploit human psychology fundamentals. Of course, every tool has both good and bad sides. If you’re doing something for good — imagine a product leveraging the hook model to help preserve the environment where users go to the product to track their carbon footprint and make amends. Well, that’s the great goal where Hook can be helpful.

On the other hand, if you’re building products that end up making you fall into the trap of doom-scrolling with no specific improvement to life, the Hook Model is probably exploiting you. It’s also important to note that Nir mainly covers the social media giants of the time (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) while explaining the above concept.

3 steps to build a habit-forming product

Let me help you translate Nir’s suggestions into an actionable strategy for your product. I would break down the strategy into three steps to build a habit-forming product:

1. Communicate commitment — Once you’ve understood the user’s needs, make sure you communicate your commitment to solving those pain points. This will empower you to create genuine triggers that help the user solve the core problem and not build a habit-forming product just for the sake of it
2. Deliver rewards — Remember what we discussed about the variable rewards before? If you want to build a habit-forming product, make sure you deliver those variable rewards. Whether it’s an update on user-generated content like on social media or a gift coupon for a milestone completion, your ability to consistently keep and grow the element of surprise will help build a tighter loop
3. Reduce friction for action and investments — Your product should be designed in a way that is very easy to invest in. But before investment, think how difficult or easy is it for your user to act on your product post the trigger stage. Make your actions (e.g., call to action buttons) simple and investments free of friction (e.g., let users easily upload a photo or video)

While you take a stab at using this playbook to build habit-forming products, remember the ethical aspects of your actions. Make sure you’re being transparent to your users about how and where data is collected and used on the product’s user experience. Keep your user’s well-being as a north star priority.

If you don’t have a healthy user, your habit-forming product will be short-lived. Always ask yourself, if your user experience design is striving to become so habit-forming, is it bringing any positive impact to their lives? Are you adding any value to their lives?

Real-life examples of successful habit-forming products

Now that you have a good understanding of the core concepts and strategies of building a habit-forming product, let me give you a few examples of successful habit-forming products:

• Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp)
  • This category is the origin story of the habit-forming products. From nudges, and notifications, to social validation and user-generated content, social media in general lives and breathes on this foundation of the Hook Model
• Streaming services (e.g., Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video)
  • This category takes the approach of a library of inventory of titles in front of the users and adds a personalization layer to create a more integrated user experience. They even let users pick up from where they last left it (continue playing a movie from the last watched timestamp). They encourage users to take action by auto-playing title trailers and make users invest by giving cast-related information as the content proceeds
• Fitness apps (e.g., Strava, MyFitnessPal, FITTR)
  • A great example of how the Hooked model can be used for social good. This category uses workout reminders, diet tracking and nudges, to encourage building a community of users of a similar healthy lifestyle. This segment has also started blending social media by amplifying user-generated content and community-based challenges (10k steps or jogging challenges)
• Gaming apps (e.g., PUBG, Fortnite, Candy Crush)
  • Gaming as a category has been doing this since its introduction. The idea is to create levels, and challenge and reward gamers with tools that work both ways — satisfy their expertise while investing in the craft and use that tool further at a later stage in the game. Imagine a specific weapon that’s revealed at a particular stage lets you move ahead in the game. Users also keep investing in improving their Avatars while making in-app purchases for skins and clothing and digital assets
• E-commerce platforms (e.g., Amazon, eBay, Flipkart)
  • Users in this category definitely benefit from the loop created within e-commerce platforms. Explore the inventory further with pages that show you what similar users also bought. The personalization layer on top of this makes the discovery process even more worthwhile. The rewards range from promo codes to special sales

Key takeaways

As you get excited about creating your loop from the Hook Model, remember the following key points:

• The Hooked Model primarily focuses on four steps: trigger, action, variable rewards and investments
• Remember to study what your users want, respect their needs, and build a loop to genuinely add value to their lives
• The Hooked Model is just a starting guideline and not a silver bullet. Keep making iterations on the product while you monitor the data to optimize the user experience
• Your goal isn’t a momentary peak of engagement, but to build a long-term satisfaction and loyalty between your users and your product. That’s the true outcome of building a habit-forming product

Keep building!

Featured image source: IconScout

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