Hooked - Chapter 3 - Action

 Action

Trigger without action won't do anything.

Trigger == itch

Action == scratch.

Fogg Behavior Model

Invented by B. J. Fogg

Formula: B = MAT

B - Behavior

M - Motivation

A - Action

T - Trigger

User must have (1) sufficient motivation, (2) ability to complete the desired action, (3) and trigger must be present to activate the behavior.

If any component of this formula is missing or inadequate, user will not cross "Action Line" and behavior will not occur.

Motivation

"Energy for action"

3 Core Motivators:

1) Seek pleasure and avoid pain

2) Seek hope and avoid fear

3) Seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.

Examples:

* Ads with using sex as motivation, ads using friendship as motivation (budlite), the Obama poster with "Hope" written on it, etc.

Fear is also strong motivator (example, the poster with a disabled man trying to eat saying that helmets are "stupid").

Ability

Any technology or product that significantly reduces the steps to complete a task will enjoy high adoption rates by the people it assists.

Reduce difficulty of the action to make user more able to do action.

Credit: Eyal, Nir.  Diagram from the book Hooked. 2019. Hooked, by Nir Eyal.

Evan Williams (cofounder of Twitter, Blogger, and Medium) - "Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time... Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps."

Twitter - After Blogger, Twitter was "microblogging" limiting only 140 chars - critics were against it, but it soared because of that limitation. (less friction to post stuff, and less expectation about thoroughness of content).

6 Elements of Simplicity (according to B.J. Fogg) that influence a task's difficulty.

* Time - How long it takes to complete an action.

* Money - the fiscal cost of taking an action.

* Physical effort - The amount of labor involved in taking the action.

* Brain cycles - The level of mental effort and focus required to take an action.

* Social deviance - How accepted the behavior is by others.

* Non-routine - according to Fogg, "How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines."

To increase likelihood that behavior will occur - Focus on simplicity as a function of the user's scarcest resource at that moment.

Example: User short on time , is product too difficult to understand, is user in social context where behavior is inappropriate, is behavior removed from user's normal routine that its strangeness is off-putting?

"What is the thing that is missing that would allow my users to proceed to the next step?"

In Hooked Model - Incorporates 6 elements by asking designers to consider how their technology can facilitate the simplest actions in anticipation of reward.

ALWAYS INCREASE / WORK ON ABILITY FIRST BEFORE MOTIVATION WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR PRODUCT.

* Increasing motivation is expensive and time consuming.  Make your product so simple that users already know how to use it, and you've got a winner.

Examples of Ability

Now Nir goes through multiple examples of how companies boosted ability to get users to use.

* Facebook Login - Took logging in (burden) , made it easier with one click "Login with Facebook" on websites.  Negative: Some users might feel resistance to share their data with Facebook and not log in.

* Sharing with Twitter - One click way for 3rd party sites to share content as a tweet - even fills the tweet out for you!

* Searching with Google - Less cluttered than competitors (yahoo, alta vista) at the time.  PageRank better algo and more relevant results.

* Apple iPhone - Wanted to make taking picture easier, put the camera right on the home page.

* Scrolling with Pinterest - Infinite scroll!

* Twitter - homepage - it evolved quite a bit - in beginning, there was a paragraph telling users what it did, etc.  People didn't want to read.  Eventually they streamlined it to just login with a short 140 character description on homepage - They had discovered that no matter how much users know about the service/product, driving them to open an account and start following people resulted in much higher engagement. 

Heuristics and Perception

There are many counterintuitive and surprising ways companies can boost users' motivation or increase their ability by understanding heuristics - the mental shortcuts we take to make decisions and form opinions.

4 common brain biases

The Scarcity Effect - Appearance of scarcity affects perception of value.

Cookie experiment - when two jars of cookies presented, one with 2 other with 10, participants valued the jar with 2 more.  Additionally if 8 were taken from jar and give to other jar, the new jar with 2 cookies was valued even more !

Example: Amazon uses this with their "Only 14 left in stock!" thingie on their pages.

The Framing Effect - Mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.

Example: World class violinist in subway - people just walk on by him.  In other venues, charges $100's for listening to him.  MRI results even back this up with participants judging bottles of wine that cost more to taste better - even though they are same wine!

The Anchoring Effect - People anchor to information when making a decision.

Example: Seeing a "Buy one get 1 half off" could cause people to buy that over a different product with actually more value.

The Endowed Progress Effect - Motivation increases as people believe they are nearing a goal.

Example: Punch card to get free sandwich or carwash - those given punch cards with 8 empty slots were less likely to fill up than punch cards with 10 slots, but 2 are pre-punched prior to giving it to customer!

Other examples are "profile completion" bars on some social sites like LinkedIn and stuff - these often come with the bar already half full even though you just created an account.

Remember and Share

* The second step in the Hooked model is action.

* The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward.

* As described by Dr. B.J. Fogg's Behavior Model-

** For any behavior to occur, a trigger must be present at the same time as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action.

** To increase the desired behavior, ensure a clear trigger is present; next, increase ability by making the action easier to do; finally align with the right motivator.

** Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; seeking hope and avoiding fear; seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection.

** Ability is influenced by the 6 factors of time, money, physical effort, brain cycles (too confusing), social deviance, and non-routineness (too new).  Ability is dependent on users and their context at that moment.

* Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts we take to make quick decisions.  Product designers can utilize many of the hundreds of heuristics to increase the likelihood of their desired action.