How TikTok Design Hooks You Up

The sign-up screen is clean and distraction-free. Users are not confused with too many choices, as the app creators follow the Hicks Law: The more choices the users have, the harder it is for them to make one.

The app makers reduce the number of interactions, clicks and taps required to set up the app, using behavioural psychology.

Big tasks are split into smaller ones, creating an intuitive step-by-step process with minimal input. The main guiding principle of intrinsic motivation is followed here: If something is easy, more people will do it.

There are three things that create any activity: motivation, ability and trigger.

People need a desire, an ability to be able to take the required action and a trigger that moves them away from inertia.

Motivating someone is challenging, but what can be managed is the ease of use to take the required action.

• The app makers auto-suggest top-rated content to hook users from the first few seconds of using the app.
• The content starts to play automatically.
• The content takes up the entire screen with no side links, videos or other distractions.

The users get to see nothing but highly entertaining and engaging content and are not able to keep the track of time, as there are no clocks displayed on the screen.

Content creation apps are alive because of creative users. The creation process, therefore, is their bread and butter. They have a highly refined, intuitive and simplified set of tools to aid instant creativity, fueling their app with engaging content, interactions and community building.

One can watch interesting stuff on TikTok almost eternally and it has two main methods to hook users: Simplicity Of Interaction and Undivided focus on content.

Variable Rewards: As the users keep swiping for more content, their brain works as if they are operating a slot machine: They like what they see and don’t know what they will get next.

The user interaction is mostly done by single taps so that the attention does not deviate from the content on the screen.

All of the buttons on the screen are reachable via the thumb, another way that TikTok ensures that user interactions remain quick and easy. Most of the apps do not go this far and have buttons all over the screen.

Certain limitations, like the 280 character limit that Twitter deploys, fuels the imagination of creators, who then use the limitation to its fullest potential. Tiktok has a 60-second limitation on its content upload, which ensures that there is not a single minute of boredom to make users close the app.

Hot triggers and notifications are best sent at a time when the user is doing a related activity(like fiddling with a certain setting), and therefore finds it helpful and contextual.

TikTok uses the best of every other social media and creation app, garnishing it with smart algorithms and eventually making a fine product with an exceptional user interface. It leverages what is familiar and does it differently.