Imagine if your product or service was habit forming and people looked forward to using your product or service multiple times per day.  Your business could soar to incredible heights like Facebook, Google, or Apple.

The entrepreneur, Nir Eyal, has done extensive studies to learn what causes habit forming products and services.  He gave the keynote at the Detorit Venture Partners found here:

Below are my notes on this talk:

How to Build Habit Forming Products

• Create a Habit with

  • Great Frequency

  • Attitude Change

• Painkiller

  • Obvious need – stop pain

  • Quantifiable market

  • Monetizable

• Vitamin

  • Emotional need, not efficacy

  • Makes me feel good knowing

  • Unknown market

• Habit is when not doing something causes pain

• Habit forming are both vitamins and painkillers

  • Starts as vitamin and

  • Create the need and alleviate

• Creating pain?  (more of an itch)

• Habit – Behavior where no cognition

• Hook

  • Trigger

  • Action

  • Variable Reward

  • Investment

• ATARI

  • A Hook

  • Trigger

  • Action

  • Reward

  • Investment

• Trigger

  • First step

  • Habits aren’t created they are built upon

  • External

    • Alarms

    • Calls to action

    • Emails

    • Stores

    • Authority

  • Internal

    • Emotions

    • Routines

    • Situations

    • Places

    • People

    • In user’s head

  • Emotions are frequent internal triggers

    • Dissatisfied

    • Indecisive

    • Lost

    • Tense

    • Fatigues

    • Inferior

    • Fear of loss

    • Bored

    • Lonesome

    • Confused

    • Powerless

    • Discouraged

    • People with depression check email more.

      • Email makes us depressed

      • Depressed people trying to use email to get out of depression

    • Internal triggers in tech

      • When I feel… I use

      • Lonely Facebook

      • Hungry Yelp, Grubhub

      • Unsure Google

      • Anxious Email

      • Lost GPS

      • Mentally fatigued ESPN, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu

    • Know your customers internal triggers

      • Every time the user feels (internal trigger) they use (product)

    • Instagram Triggers

      • External Internal

      • FB and Twitter Fear of losing the moment

      • App notifications Bored, lonesome, fear of missing out

      • App Icon

    • Summary

      • Triggers are the first step of the hook

      • Designer informs what to do next through external triggers

      • User informs what to do next through internal triggers

      • Emotions provide frequent internal triggers

  • Actions

    • Need a Simple action before the reward

    • When doing is easier thinking = action

    • Fogg Behavior Model

      • B=m.a.t.

      • Behavior = Motivation, Ability, and Trigger

    • Motivation – The energy for action

    • Motivators of Behavior

      • Seek Avoid

      • Pleasure Pain

      • Hope Fear

      • Acceptance Rejection

    • Factors of ability

      • Time

      • Money

      • Physical Effort

      • Brain cycles

      • Social deviance

      • Non-routine

    • Simple online actions in anticipation of reward

      • Login (Facebook, WordPress)

      • Search (Google, Yelp)

      • Open (Twitter, SMS, email)

      • Scroll (Pinterest, Instagram)

      • Play (Youtube, online games)

      • Failure occurs when too hard to start

    • Summary

      • Action is the second step of the hook

      • Action is the simplest behavior user can do before getting rewarded

      • To increase behavior

        • Ensure a clear trigger is present

        • Increase ability by making it easier

        • Align with the right motivator

• Variable Rewards

  • The brain and rewards

    • Reward system stimulators

    • Stimulating the Stress of Desire (the itch)

      • Dopamine system activated by anticipation of reward

      • And dampened when reward achieved

  • Supercharge the “stress of desire”

    • Anticipation

    • The unknown is fascinating

      • Our brains are prediction machines

      • We seek to understand cause and effect

      • Variability messes with our heads

      • Causes us to increase focus and engagement

      • It’s habit forming

    • Intermittent rewards increase response rate

    • The endless search

      • Dopamine drives the search

      • Variability spikes dopamine

      • Our brain was built to endlessly search

    • Variable rewards

      • From the tribe

      • From the hunt

      • From the self

    • Search for Social Rewards from the Tribe

      • Cooperation

      • Competition

      • Recognition

        • Badges/Honor Points

      • Sex

      • Empathetic Joy

    • Search for Social Rewards from the Hunt (Search for Resources)

      • Food

      • Money

        • Gambling

      • Information

        • Scrolling

        • Pinterest

    • Search for the Sensation from the Self

      • Mastery

        • Leveling up in a game

      • Consistency

      • Competency

      • Completion

      • Control

    • Must still solve a pain

      • Variable rewards are not a free pass

      • You still need to give the user what they came for.

      • (See internal trigger and motivation)

    • No engagement without autonomy

      • People resist being controlled

      • Autonomy is a pre-requisite

      • If lost, you fail

    • Finite Rewards Decay

      • As rewards become predictable, they become less interesting

      • Finite Variability Infinite Variability

      • Single-player games Multi-player games (social)

      • Consumption of Media Creation of content

      • Communities

  • Summary

    • Variable reward is the 3rd step of the hook

    • Reward types

      • Tribe

      • Hunt

      • Self

    • Maintain the feeling of autonomy, find infinite variability and alleviate user pain.

• Investments

  • Where user does a bit of “work”

  • “Pays” with something of value:

    • Time

    • Money

    • Social Capital

    • Effort

    • Emotional Commitment

    • Personal Data

  • Investment increase likelihood of next pass

    • Done in anticipation of future rewards

    • Makes next pass through hook more likely by

      • Loading the next trigger

      • Storing value

      • Creating preference

  • Loading the next trigger

    • (Pinterest) Email notification

    • Login

    • Communication (tribe) or Collecting (Hunt)

    • Pin, Re-Pin, Like, Comment

  • Storing Value

    • Content – building album of photos in instagram

    • Data – Evernote

    • Followers – Twitter

    • Reputation – Ebay

  • Creating preference

    • Ease of use – but some user work increases habit

  • As we invest we seek to be consistent with past behaviors

  • Little investments, big results

    • “Please drive carefully” sign example

    • Group 1 – 17% accepted

      • Asked to place 3 foot sign in yard on first go

    • Group 2 – 76% accepted

      • First asked to place 3 inch sign in yard

      • Two weeks later asked to place 3 foot sign in yard

  • Investments shape our tastes, preferences, and identities

  • Summary

    • Investment is the fourth step of the hook

    • Small amounts of work to increase the likelihood of the user returning by:

      • Loading the next trigger

      • Storing value

      • Creating preference

  • The Hook

    • An experience designed to connect a solution to the user’s problem with enough frequency to form a habit

    • Hooks create associations

• Cultivate Meaning

  • World is full of problems to fix

  • Help others find meaning

  • Engage them in something important

  • Build the change you want to see in the world

• Please raise your phones

  • I love feedback

  • Please go to www.OpinionTo.us

  • Help make this presentation better

    • Give feedback

    • Then get the slides

  • Thank you

Related articles from other websites:

• How to build habits in a multi-device world
• Using The Science Behind Habits To Sell Better