Why this book?
As web entrepreneurs, web designers, coders, apps creator, whatever is the product you want to build, the target and the gap we want you users to fill with, a common characteristic is shared by all these creators: the willing to create new habits.
What’s about?
Hooked is all about “Habit-Forming Opportunities”. As technology improves our lives and as technology improves itself, it becomes more and more invisible or, rather than invisible, let’s call it “transparent”. Our tech devices dictate our lives every single day without we even realise it.
Why would we like to start a new habit and stick to it, preferably on daily basis… oh no! Preferably, multiple times a day! Can you imagine the possibilities in terms of audience, traction and revenue? Well, this is already happening.
Some statistics:
The following research has been carried out by marketing agency Tecmark.
In an average week, research has discovered that the average user pick ups their phone more than 1,500 times a week.
The average owner uses this device for three hours and sixteen minutes each day – or the equivalent of almost one full day a week.
Many owners also confessed to finding themselves using their phone without realising they are doing so, with two-thirds saying they have managed to log in and browse Facebook without thinking.
And surprisingly, four in ten said they have, at one time or another, checked their emails automatically without thinking.
If you want to read more about it, please click on the link below:
Life without all these so-called magical devices seem impossible nowadays, and apps creator understood it perfectly.
“Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behaviour.”
So the main question of this book is: what makes us engage with certain things out of sheer habit? Is there a blueprint, a pattern, a 101 guide on how technologies “hook” us?
Create your own!
The author provides readers with practical insights to create user habits that stick; actionable steps for building products people love; and riveting examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest and the Bible App.
Who’s the author?
Nir Eyal spent years in the video gaming and advertising industries where he learned, applied, and at times rejected, techniques described in Hooked to motivate and influence users.
He has taught courses on applied consumer psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at Fortune 500 companies.
Ryan Hoover’s writing has appeared in Tech- Crunch, The Next Web, Forbes, and Fast Company. After working on Hooked with Nir Eyal, Hoover founded Product Hunt, a company that has been described as “the place to discover the next big things in tech.”
Advice for any tech/ web/ app entrepreneur from “Hooked”
Paul Buchheit, a partner a YCombinator that Nir Eyal quotes in this book is giving us advices on how to take opportunities on these upcoming interfaces that will disrupt our way of living:
“Live in the future! A profusion of interface changes re just a few years way. Wearable technologies like Google Glass, the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, and the Pebble smartwatch promise to change how users interact with the real and digital worlds. By looking forward to anticipate where interfaces will change, the enterprising designer can uncover new ways to form user habits”