Book Review 2024.14: Hooked, How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal, 214 pages, Paperback, 2019 -November 11, 2024

This is a short and insightful book, that is invaluable for anyone interested in digital products design. How I wish I had read this book a decade earlier when our team was designing a digital portal to automate corporate law compliances for Indian corporates secretarial automation. The utility of this book is not only in the crip framework it prescribes, but also the set of questions at the end of each chapter on how we can implement the framework in any digital product design for enhancing user engagement.

Organized in short chapters, with vivid illustrations backed by informative diagrams, the book is a very easy read designed to make the reader think and ponder on how they could implement the recommendations. The concepts outlined are where required adequately backed by psychological theories that reinforce the recommendations with a rationale for how and why they should work.  

Various new concepts are introduced in the book like the habit zone, that highlights the difference between frequency of an action and the utility of the action in habit formation that helps the reader to think through what their product is designed to deliver and where to target your investments. Likewise the differentiation between external triggers and internal triggers and the role they play in building user engagement is very useful in thinking through  and prioritizing the feature roadmap calendar.

I think the value of this book extends beyond product designers to also digital product users, as they can evaluate their own motive and benefits derived from using various products to decide where they should prioritize their time. The last chapter on the ethical challenge of designing products that can make the users addictive is commendable. By providing the framework of designers using their own products and the benefit derived in terms of utility in their product enhancing their lives to categorise between facilitator, entertainer, peddler and dealer, the author not only solves an ethical dilemma but also provides a valuable rationale for that enhances the chance of the product success by showing that solving real problems of the user is essential for success.   

Recommend this book to all those involved in digital product design and those users interested in understanding their behaviour in the digital world.  

Happy Reading and your comments are welcome.