Summary : Hooked – Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover

Keep in mind many habit-forming technologies start out as vitamins – nice-to-have products – before they develop into painkillers which relieve a genuine itch or pain. Or your product may have a niche following at first before making the leap to the general marketplace. Or perhaps some kind of new enabling technology may come along which makes your product or service feasible.

Remember you're acting as a facilitator of new ideas, products and services so the best place to look for opportunities is usually in the mirror. Scratching your own itch and observing your own behavior is one of the most consistently helpful ways to come up with next-generation product ideas.
“Instead of asking ‘what problem should I solve?’ ask ‘what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?’”

Startups are grueling and only the most fortunate persevere before finding success. If you only build for fame or fortune, you will likely find neither. But build for meaning and you can’t go wrong.”

Identify how people are actually using the product.
Codify the actions and paths your habitual users are presently taking.
Modify the product to allow more people to follow the path of your habitual users.

Rewards
Tribal or social
Hunt
Self

Variability of rewards is vital. To hold our attention over time, products have to incorporate a degree of novelty – otherwise, we turn our attention to other things. Habit-forming products align with that human tendency by offering rewards which are outside what's expected and therefore noteworthy and novel.

To come up with something which becomes a habit for your users, first understand your users – their desires, their emotions, the context within which they use your product, and so forth. Get to the root cause of what's going on by using something similar to Toyota's famed approach: Ask "Why?" five or more times

Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure or avoiding pain, seeking hope and avoiding fear, seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection.”
- Nir Eyal

In order for users to take an action, they must be sufficiently motivated, have the ability to complete the desired action and be exposed to a trigger which moves them.

Trigger – You need something to happen as frequently as possible which reminds people to use your product. Triggers can be external or internal.
Action – The various things users do in anticipation of the reward you offer. This will be amplified if the action is easy to do and is simple to describe.
Rewards – You create a craving by offering a variable reward. The more consumers do what you want, the better the rewards they secure. Variability feeds the habit.
Investment – If you can get the user to invest their time, data or money into the product, that enhances the prospect they will follow-up and reuse the product again.