Hooked: How to build habit-forming products - Book Review

My daily work commute went from a quick 15 mins drive to a tiring 2 hours commute. I always believe every challenge comes with an opportunity. I used my increased driving time to start reading listening to books!

I purchased an Audible subscription and downloaded books for all the available credit!

One of the first books I downloaded was “Hooked: How to build habit-forming products” by Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover.



Hooked: How to build habit-forming products


Hooked address a wide variety of audience. I am going to share my perspective from a product designer.


This book provides a framework for building the right products. It will help you understand the physiology behind habit-forming products like Twitter, Facebook, Robinhood, etc. The author Nir Eyal, question the ethicality of addictive products and encourages the readers to create responsible products.



The usage of addictive products has skyrocketed in the past few years. Even if you are a consumer, designer, or product owner, it is extremely vital to understand the reason behind the rise of these products.


More than 3.5 billion people use social media worldwide as of April 2019 - www.statista.com


Hook Model:

The author discusses the ’Hook Model’ for creating habit-forming products.

The model contains four sections:


1.Internal and External Trigger

2.Action

3.Variable Reward

4. Investment

 

I am not going to deep dive into the details of the sections. I will leave that to the author :)  


Here is a video from the author on the book






Final Verdict:


I would recommend this book to anyone building a product. This is an interesting and thought-provoking book. I am sure it will be a treat to all the product designers, UX designers, and aspiring entrepreneurs.


Let me close this post with a super interesting review by Matthew Charles Mullenweg the founder of WordPress.

“Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will”