PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India |

South Africa | China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company

Published by Portfolio / Penguin, a member of Penguin

Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Nir Eyal

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity,
encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and
creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an
authorized edition of this book and for complying with
copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing
any part of it in any form without permission. You are
supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to
publish books for every reader.
 Hooked was previously published by the author.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION

DATA
Eyal, Nir.
Hooked : how to build habit-forming products / Nir Eyal with
Ryan Hoover.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
eBook ISBN 978-0-698-19066-5
1. New products. 2. Consumer behavior. 3. Consumers’
preferences. I. Title.
HF5415.153.E93 2014
658.5'75—dc23
2014022222

Version_1
 contents

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication

Introduction

1: The Habit Zone

2: Trigger
3: Action
4: Variable Reward
5: Investment
6: What Are You Going to Do with
This?
7: Case Study: The Bible App
8: Habit Testing and Where to Look
for Habit-Forming Opportunities

Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
For Julie
 introduction
Seventy-nine percent of smartphone
owners check their device within fifteen
minutes of waking up every morning.1
Perhaps more startling, fully one-third of
Americans say they would rather give up
sex than lose their cell phones.2
A 2011 university study suggested
people check their phones thirty-four
times per day.3 However, industry
insiders believe that number is closer to
an astounding 150 daily sessions.4
 Face it: We’re hooked.
The technologies we use have turned
into compulsions, if not full-fledged
addictions. It’s the impulse to check a
message notification. It’s the pull to visit
YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a
few minutes, only to find yourself still
tapping and scrolling an hour later. It’s
the urge you likely feel throughout your
day but hardly notice.
Cognitive psychologists define
habits as “automatic behaviors triggered
by situational cues”: things we do with
little or no conscious thought.5 The
products and services we use habitually
alter our everyday behavior, just as their
designers intended.6 Our actions have
been engineered.
 How do companies, producing little
more than bits of code displayed on a
screen, seemingly control users’ minds?
What makes some products so habit
forming?
Forming habits is imperative for the
survival of many products. As infinite
distractions compete for our attention,
companies are learning to master novel
tactics to stay relevant in users’ minds.
Amassing millions of users is no longer
good enough. Companies increasingly
find that their economic value is a
function of the strength of the habits they
create. In order to win the loyalty of
their users and create a product that’s
regularly used, companies must learn not
only what compels users to click but
also what makes them tick.
Although some companies are just
waking up to this new reality, others are
already cashing in. By mastering habit-
forming product design, the companies
profiled in this book make their goods
indispensable.

FIRST TO MIND WINS

Companies that form strong

user habits enjoy several
benefits to their bottom line.
These companies attach their
product to internal triggers.
As a result, users show up
without any external
prompting.
 Instead of relying on
expensive marketing, habit-
forming companies link their
services to the users’ daily
routines and emotions.7 A
habit is at work when users
feel a tad bored and instantly
open Twitter. They feel a pang
of loneliness and before
rational thought occurs, they
are scrolling through their
Facebook feeds. A question
comes to mind and before
searching their brains, they
query Google. The first-to-
mind solution wins. In chapter
1 of this book, we explore the
competitive advantages of
habit-forming products.
How do products create
habits? The answer: They
manufacture them. While
fans of the television show
Mad Men are familiar with
how the ad industry once
created consumer desire
during Madison Avenue’s
golden era, those days are
long gone. A multiscreen
world of ad-wary consumers
has rendered Don Draper’s
big-budget brainwashing
useless to all but the biggest
brands.
Today, small start-up
teams can profoundly change
behavior by guiding users
through a series of
experiences I call hooks. The
more often users run through
these hooks, the more likely
they are to form habits.
How I Got Hooked
In 2008 I was among a team of Stanford
MBAs starting a company backed by
some of the brightest investors in Silicon
Valley. Our mission was to build a
platform for placing advertising into the
booming world of online social games.
Notable companies were making
hundreds of millions of dollars selling
virtual cows on digital farms while
advertisers were spending huge sums of
money to influence people to buy
whatever they were peddling. I admit I
didn’t get it at first and found myself
standing at the water’s edge wondering,
“How do they do it?”
At the intersection of these two
industries dependent on mind
manipulation, I embarked upon a journey
to learn how products change our actions
and, at times, create compulsions. How
did these companies engineer user
behavior? What were the moral
implications of building potentially
addictive products? Most important,
could the same forces that made these
experiences so compelling also be used
to build products to improve people’s
lives?
Where could I find the blueprints for
forming habits? To my disappointment, I
found no guide. Businesses skilled in
behavior design guarded their secrets,
and although I uncovered books, white
papers, and blog posts tangentially
related to the topic, there was no how-to
manual for building habit-forming
products.
I began documenting my
observations of hundreds of companies
to uncover patterns in user-experience
designs and functionality. Although
every business had its unique flavor, I
sought to identify the commonalities
behind the winners and understand what
was missing among the losers.
I looked for insights from academia,
drawing upon consumer psychology,
human-computer interaction, and
behavioral economics research. In 2011
I began sharing what I learned and
started working as a consultant to a host
of Silicon Valley companies, from small
start-ups to Fortune 500 enterprises.
Each client provided an opportunity to
test my theories, draw new insights, and
refine my thinking. I began blogging
about what I learned at NirAndFar.com,
and my essays were syndicated to other
sites. Readers soon began writing in
with their own observations and
examples.
In the fall of 2012 Dr. Baba Shiv and
I designed and taught a class at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business
on the science of influencing human
behavior. The next year, I partnered with
Dr. Steph Habif to teach a similar course
at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.
These years of distilled research and
real-world experience resulted in the
creation of the Hook Model: a four-
phase process companies use to forms
habits.

Through consecutive Hook

cycles, successful products
reach their ultimate goal of
unprompted user engagement,
bringing users back repeatedly,
without depending on costly
advertising or aggressive
messaging.

While I draw many examples from

technology companies given my industry
background, hooks are everywhere—in
apps, sports, movies, games, and even
our jobs. Hooks can be found in virtually
any experience that burrows into our
minds (and often our wallets). The four
steps of the Hook Model provide the
framework for the chapters of this book.

The Hook Model

1. Trigger
A trigger is the actuator of behavior—
the spark plug in the engine. Triggers
come in two types: external and