Hooked

Pal Graham adhises entrepreneurs to leave the sexy sounding hashew ideas behind and instead build for their own needs: "instead of asking What problem should I solve?' ask what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" Studying your own needs can lead to remarkable discover. is and new ideas because the designer always has a direct line to at least one user: him- or herself.

Habit Testing - Modify Armed with new insights, it is time to revisit your product and identify ways to nudge new users down the same Habit Path taken by devotees. This may include an update to the registration funnel, content changes, feature removal, or increased emphasis on an existing feature. Twitter used the insights gained from the previous step to modify its on-boarding process, encouraging new users to immediately begin following others.

Are you a facilitator, peddler, entertainer, or dealer? • Entertainers use their product but do not believe it can improve people's lives. They can be successful, but without making the lives of others better in some way, the entertainer's products often lack staying power.

Are you a facilitator, peddler, entertainer, or dealer? • Peddlers believe their product can materially improve people's lives but do not use it themselves. They must beware of the hubris and inauthenticity that comes from building solutions for people they do not understand firsthand.

You are now equipped to use the Hooked Model to ask yourself these fundamental questions for building effective hooks: 1. What do users really want? What pain is your product relieving? (Internal trigger) 2. What brings users to vour service? (External trigger) 3. What is the simplest action users take in anticipation of reward, and how can you simplify your product to make this action easier? (Action) 4. Are users fulfilled by the reward yet left wanting more? (Variable reward) 5. What "bit of work" do users invest in your product? Does it load the next trigger and store value to improve the product with use? (Investment)

In the investment phase. however, asking users to do a bit of work comes after users have received variable rewards, not before. The timing of asking for user investment is critically important. By asking for the investment after the reward, the company has an opportunity to leverage a central trait of human behavior.

Together, the three tendencies just described influence our future actions: The more effort we put into something, the more likely we are to value it; we are more likely to be consistent with our past behaviors; and finally, we change our preferences to avoid cognitive dissonance.

• Rewards of the tribe is the search for social rewards fueled by connectedness with other people. • Rewards of the hunt is the search for material resources and information. • Rewards of the self is the search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion.

Unfortunately, too many companies build their products betting users will do what they make them do instead of letting them do what they want to do. Companies fail to change user behaviors because they do not make their services enjoyable for its own sake, often asking users to learn new, unfamiliar actions instead of making old routines easier.