What makes some technology so habit-forming? | Nir Eyal | TED Institute

[Music] we've all seen how the products we use can change our behaviors and part in particular these personal Technologies like our iPhones email Twitter Snapchat WhatsApp all these products that change our daily Behavior they keep us checking again and again and again how do these products do it these products are masters of habit these behaviors that we do with little or no conscious thought turns out that about 40% of what you do day in and day out whether you like it or not is done purely out of habit I'd like to share with you a

design pattern that companies use to build habit forming products it's a technique that I've learned in my years in the advertising and gaming space and it's what I teach at the design school school at Stanford University it's called the hook the hook is an experience designed to connect the user's problem to the company's product with enough frequency to form a habit now these hooks start with a trigger a trigger tells us what to do next it can be some piece of information like play this or click here now we see these external triggers all the

time right they're in our environment in our day-to-day lives both what we don't consider enough and what turns out to be absolutely critical to forming these long-term habits is creating an association with what's called an internal trigger internal triggers are things that tell us what to do next but where the information for what to do is stored as a memory inside the user's head so what we do when we're in a particular place a certain situation partaking in a particular routine or or experience certain emotions dictates what we do next now the most frequent internal

triggers are not just any emotion they are in fact negative emotions so what we do when we're feeling Lonesome or bored or lost or dissatisfied or lonely what we do when we experience these negative emotions prompts us to action dictates what we do next with little or no conscious thought in fact a recent study found that people suffering from depression check email more I think I just saw one two three people put away their pH well what does this mean why is this happening well it turns out that people suffering from depression experience what psychologists

call negative veilance State they feel down more frequently than the rest of the population and what are they doing to boost their mood to get out of that negative veilance state they're going online they're checking their devices more often than the rest of the population but of course we all do this to some degree don't we where do we go when we're feeling lonely what app or website do we check Facebook of course what about when we're unsure about something before we scan our brains to see if we know the answer we're Googling it and

what about when we're feeling bored well that's when people go on to YouTube or Reddit check stock prices sports scores the front page news lots of these solutions for this painful internal trigger of boredom so after the internal trigger cues us to action next comes the action phase defined as the simplest Behavior done in anticipation of a reward it's something as simple as a scroll on Pinterest or a quick search on Google or what could be easier than pushing the play button on YouTube turns out there's actually a formula to help us predict the likelihood

of these behaviors comes to us from a researcher at Stanford by the name of BJ fog who tells us that for any Behavior B we require three things sufficient motivation sufficient ability and a trigger must be present so we can plot these three elements on this graph motivation on the Y AIS ability on the X so if something is very easy to do it's on the far right if something is difficult to do it's on the far left and when we cross that red threshold and the trigger is present the behavior occurs every single time

online offline your behavior your spouse or kids Behavior your customer or user's Behavior always requires these three basic elements of motivation ability and triggers and what we see happening today is that companies building habit forming Technologies are pushing that ability curve as far to the right as possible because what they know is that the easier a behavior is to do the more likely we are to do it and next comes the reward now when we talk about rewards we have to talk about the brain and in particular an area of the brain called the nucleus

succumbent now what's so interesting about the nucleus succumbent is that it becomes most active in anticipation of a reward but when we actually get the thing we want the thing that's finally going to make us happy and make us feel good that's when the nucleus accumbent becomes less active so the way the brain gets us to act is by stimulating this itch that we seek to scratch and it turns out that there is a way to supercharge that itch does anybody want to know how to manufacture desire I'm doing it to you right now because

the unknown is fascinating so when I took that long pause and I asked you a question and I didn't say anything some of you for Thought what's going to happen next did I forget my lines what's going to happen and it turns out that that bit of the unknown the bit of mystery causes us to increase focus and engage and so in all sorts of products that you find most habit forming most engaging think about the products that capture your attention and won't let go you will find one or more of these three types of

variable rewards rewards of the tribe rewards of the hunt and rewards of the self rewards of the tribe are things that feel good good that have this element of variability and come from other people good example I can think of online is social media so when I open up the Facebook app I'm not quite sure what photos I might see or what the comments might say or how many likes did I get high degree of social variability next comes the rewards of the hunt now when I talk about rewards of the hunt people often think

about slot machines they think about gambling where of course the variability comes from what what you might win when you play these games of chance but it turns out we find the exact same psychology online consider the feed have you wondered why so many products today online have this feed mechanism take a look at Twitter's timeline for example if I open up Twitter maybe the first tweet's not that interesting maybe the second tweet's not that interesting but maybe the third or fourth is interesting and what do I have to do to see more of that

interesting content well all I have to do is to keep scrolling and scrolling and that scrolling uses the exact same psychology as pulling on a slot machine variable rewards of the hunt and finally variable rewards of the self variable rewards of the self are things that feel good that have this element of variability but don't come from other people and aren't about these information or material rewards these are things that are intrinsically pleasurable the search for Mastery consistency competency and control so when we're playing games online for example example Candy Crush Angry Birds any of

these games I'm not playing with other people I'm not necessarily even winning anything in terms of material rewards but there's something fun and engaging about getting to the next level the next accomplishment and I know I know some people say to me look I don't play these games I'm not much of a gamer this this doesn't really apply to me but if you're anything like me I bet you're playing this game every day checking those unread messages finishing the to-dos on your to-do list or the thing that always gets me is opening up that one

app so I can clear it away on my home screen are all examples of variable rewards of the self the search for Mastery consistency competency and control finally the last step of the hook is the investment phase the investment phase is where the user does something to increase the likelihood of their next pass through the hook one way that Investments increase the likelihood of the next pass is by storing value now storing value is a really big deal because when it comes to the physical products that we use in our day-to-day lives think about these

chairs your clothing everything in the physical world loses value with wear and tear they depreciate but habit forming products should do the opposite they should appreciate in value and they do this because of this principle of stored value so the more content put into my Google Drive the more data I give to mint.com or any number of other services the more followers I acrew the more my reputation improves on sites like upwork or eBay or Airbnb the better the product becomes to me and How likely am I to leave one of these products or Services

after I've stored all this value in the platform the product suddenly becomes kind of sticky it's hard to leave which brings me to this cold hard conclusion that when it comes to many of the products and services that we use there is no rule that says the best product wins in fact it's the product that can form the Mind Monopoly the one that can create the Habit that captures the market because it's through successive Cycles through these hooks Trigger action reward and investment that customer preferences are shaped that our tastes are formed and that these

habits take hold so now that we know how these products hook us what do we do with this information well to many of us these products seem frivolous and maybe these company tactics seem manipulative I think we're all going to have to figure out which of these products serve us and which hurt us but when I look at these products and services I ask myself what can we learn because the real problem here is not that a few companies have mastered habit forming product design the real problem is that too many products and services out

there are not engaging enough think about the products that you're forced to use every day at work or at school consider the state-of-the-art products that we have to use to interact with our government services or even with the companies that we depend upon these products and services they don't suck Us in not in the way that Facebook or our iPhone might know these products just plain old suck so I think that we can do much much better because what makes these products so engaging also makes them better there is an entire world of products out

there that fail to engage us because the product makers don't understand the psychology of good product design but there are some products out there leading the way I've had the pleasure of working with and investing in many companies that are using hooks for good and I'm particularly excited about these companies that can use hooks to help people in need a veteran suffering from PTSD or a parent of a child with a disability or someone suffering from depression can use an app like this one to connect with a counselor anytime and for free the hook is

simple the trigger is feeling down the action is simply opening the app the variable reward of the tribe is connecting with a counselor and the investment and here's where it gets really interesting is learning to become a counselor listener yourself this one app and there are many others like it Services 130,000 sessions per week in 180 countries in 140 languages by forming this habit of not only connecting people but helping them get better themselves by helping helping others you see I think we can use habit forming technology to help people live happier healthier more connected

more productive lives truly we can use habits for good thank you very much