External Triggers

To build effective hooks:

1. Look for internal triggers. Ask yourself what pain is the product relieving
2. Find the external trigger. Ask yourself what brings users to your service
3. Simplify. Make it as easy...

“Before users create the mental associations that activate their automatic behaviors, they must first invest in the product.”

• Escalation of commitment:  Once you commit to doing something (invest your time and money), you are likely to commit...

• A trigger is what starts a behaviour. It is the spark in the engine.  There are two types of triggers: external and internal.
• External triggers exist as part of the environment. They include phone apps, emails, photographs, etc. Internal triggers are...

“Internal triggers tell the user what to do next through associations stored in the user’s memory.”

• Emotions, particularly negative emotions, are powerful internal triggers.
• Fear, Greed, lust are some of them

The manipulation matrix: Has four quadrants that show the different types of creators: the peddler, the facilitator, the dealer, and the entertainer.

1. The facilitator. The facilitator helps users create healthy habits
2. The peddler. 

Forms of investment in digital products include:

• Following. Facebook and Twitter allow users to follow others
• Posting. Users can create content on social media that they see as forms of investment
• Reputation. Likes and ...

Types of variable rewards:

• Tribe. Rewards of the tribe are driven by our social connections to others
• Hunt. Pursuing material things and resources is rewarding in itself
• Self. Humans have intrinsic motivation to better ...

• Variable rewards can lead to compulsive behaviour on the part of the user. There is email addiction, social media addiction, and even addiction to news cycles. This form of addiction happens because with variable rewards you never know what you are going to get.
• Only...

• The Hook Model explains the four-phase process that companies use to form habits.
• The four phases are a trigger, action, variable reward, and investment.
• For companies, the desire is to achieve the goal of unprompted user engagement with their products.

• User habits are good for business because they create unprompted user engagement.
• Companies can determine their product’s habit-forming potential by plotting two factors: frequency and perceived utility.
• Frequency is the level of enga...

• Companies should create the goal of making users invest as part of the engagement with their product or service. That way, they will be more likely to come back.

“Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more it is used. They enable ...

Action follows the trigger phase.

“The trigger, driven by internal and external cues, informs the user of what to do next.”

Ingredients that are needed to initiate any and all behaviours:

1. Sufficient motivation
2. Abil...

• To increase the likelihood that an action will occur, product designers should focus on simplicity. Designers can also use heuristics to influence user behaviour.

Elements of simplicity:

• Time. An indication of how long it takes to complete an action

• Rewards are unpredictable in the timing and size of reward.
• Variable rewards drive more user activity than fixed rewards. Companies that offer a chance at variable rewards such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter get more users hooked to their products.

“Expe...

• People seek to be consistent with past behaviours and also seek to avoid cognitive dissonance.
• Cognitive dissonance: Holding contradictory beliefs and attitudes that result in psychological stress when challenged. Humans generally seek to avoid cognitive dissonance.

With the Hook Model, it is easy to manipulate users. The maker of a product needs to ask two questions: 

• would I use the product myself?
• will the product help users materially and improve their lives?