How many times a day do you check your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc? Statistics show on average people spend 6-8 hours daily on these apps. What causes people to spend so much of their time on social media?
Recently I read about the Hook Model methodology by Entrepreneur, author, and behavioral economist Nir Eyal. Through this article, I would try to summarize my key takeaways from it.
The Hook Model consists of the following phases:
Trigger: Triggers are things that tell us what to do next. There are two types of triggers: External and Internal. External triggers are things in our environment that tell us what to do like buy now, add to cart, etc. Internal Triggers are perhaps the most important thing when it comes to building habit-forming products. In this, the information about what to do next is stored in the user's head. Feeling bored/lonely? Open Instagram/Facebook. Feeling Uncertain? Let's Google it. Internal triggers are caused by emotions.
Action: Action is the simplest behavior executed in anticipation of the reward. For example Scrolling on Instagram, Searching on Google, Pressing the Play button on YouTube. If something is hard to do, People are less likely to do it. Hence it becomes really important to keep the User Interface of applications as simple as possible so that users can use it easily and it can become a habit.
Variable Reward: The problem that is solved because of the action taken is the reward. But just giving the reward is not enough if we are building habit-forming products. Uncertainty in what could be the reward, what can happen next, creates curiosity in the minds of users and reinforces the cycle of behavior. For example: If you start scrolling Instagram feed, you don’t know what you are going to see next which adds the element of variability.
Investment: Investment is when people put something into the product in anticipation of a future benefit. For example: If we send a message to someone on WhatsApp, there is no immediate reward. But when the other person will reply, it will start the hook all over again. Similarly on Facebook, if you create content, give personal data(Pictures, Videos), you are far more likely to return to the application again and again.
Concluding, The hook model emphasizes that the best products are those which control our minds. Products that we turn to first with little or no consciousness of mind ultimately take the lead.