HOOKED How to Build Habit-Forming Products - NIR EYAL - 2. Trigger

Trigger.md

HOOKED How to Build Habit-Forming Products - NIR EYAL

2. Trigger

External Triggers

1. Paid Triggers

• Ads, SEO

2. Earned Triggers

• Press mentions, viral videos, featured by app store

3. Relationship Triggers

• "Like", Word of mouth

4. Owned Triggers

• news letter for subscribers, app icon on the screen, push notifications

Internal Triggers

• Emotions
  • Negative ones: Feeling of boredom, loneliness, frustraion, confusion and indecisiveness
    • e.g., The special moment will be gone, take a photo and upload on Instagram
  • Positive ones: share good news, entertain people
    • e.g., It maintains social connections

Depressed people tend to use the internet more, to lift their mood. When you are bored, you want to find exitement.

When you feel lonly, you use Facebook to connect people.

Emotions form your new habit.

Building for Triggers

"Find the pain people seek to solve"

The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user's pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company's product or service as the source of relief.

People want to do the same things they always do. They don't know what emotions motivate them.

You have to be the user of the product, to write the story from users' side.

Create a clear description of users

• Desires
• Emotions
• The context they use the product

Tools

• User narratives
• Customer development
• Usability studies
• Empathy maps
• 5 whys method (to reach the core - emotion)

Do this now

• Who is your product's user?
• What is the user doing right before your intended habit?
• Come up with three internal triggers (...) Refer to the 5 Whys Method described in this chapter.
• Which internal trigger does your user experience most frequently?
• Finish this brief narrative using the most frequent internal trigger and the habit (...)
• (...) what the user is doing right before the first action of the habit (...)
• How can you couple an external trigger as closely as possible to when the user's internal trigger fires?
• 1. Think of at least three conventional ways to trigger your user with current technology (e-mails, notifications. text messages, etc.)
  2. Then stretch yourself to come up with at least three crazy or currently impossible ideas for ways to trigger your user (wearable computers, biometric sensors, carrier pigeons, etc.) (...)