Variable reward
The third phase of Hooked model is variable reward, where the product rewards users by solving a problem and reinforce their motivation.
Research shows that what drives customers to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.
When something breaks the norms that our minds are used to, we suddenly will become aware of it again. This kind of novelty creates the discomforting experience and excitement of uncertainty without fear of harm, as well as sparks our interest and makes us pay attention to.
Rewards of the Tribe
This is for users who want to get social validation (eg. acceptation, attraction, importance and inclusiveness) by receiving recognition on apps. This can be a “like” and a comment, badges or rewarding point system.
“People who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behaviour are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions. This technique works quite well when people observe the behaviour of people most like themselves or who are slightly more experienced.”
Rewards of the Hunt
This describes the need to acquire physical objects to aid our survival. In today’s context, food is extended to something else more essential to today’s life —— information, curiosity and other resources.
Examples are pursuit for winning in gambling, random encounter of relevant content in Twitter’s endless “feed”, the cut-off images at the bottom edge of Pinterest.
Rewards of the Self
People desire to gain a sense of competency, similar to OCD. Adding an element of mystery to this goal makes the pursuit all the more enticing.
For instance, advancing a character and unlock more assets to gain progression and completion in video games; achieving a no-unread-emails state by checking inbox even no new mails; and to finish progress bars on learning or social media sites.
Want to do V.S. Have to do
“Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behaviour.” What do they want, monetary rewards or social rewards? More importantly, are you creating the product people want to use the service, not feel they have to.
“Although influencing behaviour can be a part of good product design, heavy-handed efforts may have adverse consequences and risk losing user’s trust.” User needs to have the sense that they got the control of the product and their experience, in other word, a sense of autonomy/ agency.
Sometimes, one magic sentence could make great difference. French research shows that by adding “But you have are free to accept or refuse” at the end of asking for bus fare from strangers doubled the amount that people gave. The researchers believe this magic sentence disarms our instinctive rejection of being told what to do.
People don’t like to be told what to do. Companies that successfully change behaviours present users with an implicit choice between their old way of doing things and a new, more convenient way to fulfil existing needs.
Some products’ variability is finite
Compared to websites that feature user generated content, some products’ nature is less variable and more predictable. The predictability of the product leads to finite variability thus less engaging. For instance, World of Warcraft is frequently play with teams, it is the hart-to-predict behaviour of other people that keeps the game interesting.
Investment
Finally, here comes the fourth phase in the Hooked Model, also the start of loading a new trigger to start the cycle all over again (e.g. Tinder). The investment phase concerns the anticipation of rewards in the future.
Investments in a product create preferences because of three factors: people always overvalue our work; people are consistent with past behaviours; and people tend to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Users tend to pay back to the service by revealing more personal info and giving out more trust when they are satisfied with it, in other word, when they get the variable rewards. This phenomenon is called reciprocation. Vice versa.
By creating some frictions in this phase, users will be more closely bonded with the product and less likely turn to its competitors due to their stored value in the form of content (Spotify Discover Weekly); data (Monzo budgets); followers (Twitter, Instagram, Youtube...), reputation (Yelp, Airbnb...) or/ and skill (Coursera).
Conclusion
So far, I have covered the Hooked cycle for creating a habit-forming product. In spite of so many theories and researches explained, it seems a good platform should be able to know how to manipulate users, in a good way, and to provide the tool to scratch the itch precisely.
I keep the blog to urge myself finish the book in certain amount of time and record the inspiration I got from the book. In the next blog, I will cover the last three chapters of this book and it will be the last blog of my reading note on Hooked, see you soon…
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