How to Build Habit-Forming Products — Part #2

Your Habits, Good and Bad, Are Money in the Bank to the People Who Make the Products You Use Every Day

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Ubiquitous access to the web, transferring greater amounts of personal data at faster speeds than ever before, has created a more potentially addictive world.

3. “Variable Reward: The Hook’s Ability to Create a Craving”

Craving is how the Hook Model builds your desire. Once people act, they experience the relief of having their problem solved or their urge satiated. Research into reward behavior shows that anticipation of an award activates the brain’s nucleus accumbens or pleasure center. However, as people come to expect rewards, incentives begin to lose their allure. Introducing variable payoffs — that is, unexpected or intermittent rewards — revives activity in the brain’s pleasure center.

Variable awards fall into three types: “the tribe, the hunt and the self.” Tribe rewards tap into the desire to connect socially and to feel included. Social media sites such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, and computer games such as League of Legends, deftly exploit this universal craving. People visit Facebook repeatedly to…