So these hooks, this four step process,
starts with a trigger to an action, then a reward, and then an investment.
So every hook starts with a trigger.
A trigger prompts the habit, and we have these two types of triggers,
an external trigger or an internal trigger.
External triggers are things in our environment that tell us
what to do next.
They give us some piece of information, click here, buy now,
a friend telling you about this great new app through word of mouth.
All example of external triggers.
These external triggers prompt us to action.
That's the habit itself.
Opening an app, scroll through Pinterest, search on Google,
push the play button on YouTube.
These are these actions that we do with little to no conscious thought,
that are these very simple behaviors,
these very small behaviors that we do seeking a reward.
Which brings me to the third step of the hook, the reward phase
is where the user's itch is scratched where they get what they came for,
and yet there is a bit of mystery around what they might find
next time they engage with the product.
So it's not just a reward, it turns out that habit forming technologies
integrate what's called a variable reward.
So this comes from the classic work of BF Skinner,
the father of operant conditioning.
Skinner found that when he gave rewards to his pigeons in these little boxes,
on a variable basis, so sometimes the pigeons would peck at the disk,
they wouldn't receive a reward, the next time they would receive a reward.
What Skinner observed was that the rate of response,
the number of times these pigeons pecked at the disk increased when the reward
was given on an intermittent new schedule of reinforcement.
And so in all sorts of products that we find most habit forming,
most engaging, we find this bit of mystery, this bit of variability.
So searching and scrolling and scrolling on a news feed, or
what makes sports fun to watch is the uncertainty of will our
team win the game, or what makes for a great TV show or movie?
Right, the uncertainty about how the happy ending is going to unwind.
All of these are examples of variable rewards.
And finally, the investment phase, the last step of the hook.
The investment phase is where the user is prompted to put something into
the product to invest in the product in anticipation of a future benefit.
So the purpose of investments is to increase the likelihood of the next
pass, that's what the investment phase is for, and it does this in two ways.
The investments load the next trigger.
So loading the next trigger, an example of that would be, when I send someone
a message on WhatsApp, I don't get any immediate rewards, right?
There's no leader boards, there's no badges, there's no points,
nothing really happens.
What I'm doing is I'm loading the next trigger because I'm likely to get
a reply, and that reply comes coupled with an external trigger, hey here's
a message from your friend, which prompts me to use the hook once again.
The second way that investments increase the likelihood of the next pass
is by storing value, and this is a big deal.
Storing value is when the product gets better and better with use.
It appreciates in value,
and it does this by storing data, followers, reputation, content.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Right,
anything that I'm putting into the app that gets better and better over time.
And so it's through successive cycles through these hooks,
trigger, action, reward,
investment, that now an association is built with that second type of trigger.
Remember, I told you there was two types of triggers, external triggers and
internal triggers.
The internal trigger are these things in our life that prompt us
to action like a place, a situation, a routine, a certain person, and
most frequently emotions that prompt us to do this next action, this next habit,
with little or no conscious thought, but without any explicit information.
So over time, through successive cycles through these hooks,
now we use the product, not with a message that tells us, hey,
click here, but with a need, exactly.
We internally trigger ourselves, we have these associations.
So I'm lonely, I check Facebook.
I'm uncertain, I Google.
I'm bored and I'm on YouTube, or Reddit, or checking stock prices, or
sports scores, right?
We do these things instantaneously because of these successive cycles
through these hooks.