Gotcha! Hooked with Products

I was recently gifted a book by a mentor. It sure is a must read for anyone who has anything to do even remotely with product design or product management. I must say 'Nir Eyal & Ryan Hoover' in 'Hooked' have done a good job in inspiring me to write this 'trigger' for them. I am sure this 'trigger' shall lead to 'actions' of behaviour change in how I look at products. Writing this piece dedicated to the book is one of the 'actions' that was so effortless & easy on my part. I am sure the anticipation of all the 'likes' and 'shares' of this piece is the 'the variable reward' that has my heart pounding already! So much so I am committed to be a ambassador for the book, asking my friends and family to go through it. This is one heck of an 'investment' if you ask me. Am I hooked?

Ladies and Gentlemen.. Welcome to world of being hooked with products!

The authors have beautifully defined the 'method' to the madness of products. Personally, I would love to revisit all the products I have worked over time in light of the read and make amends to make them more engaging and as they say 'hooked'. 

Allow me to take you through a 50,000 ft view of key takeaways of the read:

1. I really liked how the authors defined the concept of habit as a function of frequency and perceived utility. Finally a way to measure and observe if a repetitive behaviour will die out or become a habit!  

2. As described in the introduction of this piece, being hooked is a function of the following steps which can make users keep coming back for more

Trigger: Triggers are interventions which entice users to come back to the product. These may be both external or internal. The marketing game mostly deals with the external trigger which as per our TG may be ATL, BTL or both. Internal triggers are mostly ways to alleviate an 'itch' in the user's frame of mind. This 'itch' is 'encoded as a learned association in the user's memory' . For example, Why do you keep refreshing your email inbox when there are no unread messages? Why do keep refreshing the Linkedin or Facebook feed every now and then.. Think about it?

Actions: It describes how the Fogg's Behaviour Model can be used to find out if a user(s)  will act or not.

B= MAT

where M is Motivation, A is Ability and T is the trigger to activate the behaviour. Another interesting point was to gauge the difficulty of the task in terms of time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social acceptance & Non-routine. I really loved the example to show case scarcity effect (less is more valuable) , Framing effect (Our very own 'Sonu Nigam' was seen singing in a street. He 'earned' 10 Rs for his singing vs the lakhs/crores he gets in a show), Anchoring effect (50% off, Buy 2 get 1 free), Endowed progress effect (8 paid car wash vs 8 paid + 2 free car wash or building out incentives in user journeys)  

Variable Reward: I really liked as to how the authors brought out the concept of variability in a reward structure such that the reward itself maybe irrelevant but the anticipation of being rewarded keeps bringing users back. Again, the book went through some splendid examples on the concept of finite variability in which a novelty with variable reward structure becomes boring / mundane when it fails to evolve to something that is not being anticipated by the user. FarmVille etc.. 'Pokemon go' you better watch out! ;) It correctly identified that 'variable reward' is also not 'one size fits all' paradigm. One needs to clearly define what reward matches the user's aspiration. 

Investment: When one defines a user journey with the right triggers, actions and rewards one must also be cognisant to take some commitment from the user. Commitment or investment from the user be it content, views, likes or shares makes sure that the user returns. This investment may come in terms of storing value which may further be user's data, reputation and more. This investment is also the genesis of the next level trigger to bring the 'Repeat' behaviour.

Until now, I personally have been looking at user journeys as straight lines where the user (actor) engages with the plot over a period of time to create engaging stories. After this 'Eureka' moment I tend to agree user journeys are spirals, provided you can figure out the right trigger, action, variability in rewards and investment from user. So next time we think of the onboarding, activation, engagement journeys in the product life cycle, think again! You might just want to pay some heed to these concepts to bring engagement for growth!

Oh btw, I have just invested for the authors by putting in this 'next level' trigger for people in my network to go through the book. Now this is called 'being hooked'!!

*Thanks Amar for an amazing book :)