Ever wonder why you use the products that you use? If you could only answer that question for everyone who uses the product, you will not need the book I just read – “Hooked” by Nir Eyal. Of the many conscious or subconscious decisions and factors that go into using the product, this book captures many of them, and provides a prescriptive guidance on building your own one.
The fascination for me to read this book came naturally – I love to understand human psychology and other factors that go into many day-to-day activities. A successful software product, which creates monetary benefits for its maker, is one such things I wanted to know how to build.
My first step was another great book – “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. While the book is another great reads, the book doesn’t necessarily address building products directly. You will, however, learn how to make a better impact with your ideas – presentations, pitches, stories, and so on.
“Hooked” provides what every product developer, entrepreneur, and founder of products needs – a guide to translate their visions into a highly usable and money-making product. Else, despite the greatness of their vision, the product might lag in adoption, and not helping in the execution of the vision.
The premise of the book is simple – leverage habits of people to have them use products you build. The better their habit of using your product regularly, the more successful your product becomes.
But how to make that happen? Well, this is where I think the book shines – it provides a great framework to use, which is highly practical and can be put to use almost immediately.
Having build a few products in the past, and ventured into a few startups, I can see why this knowledge is immensely useful for entrepreneurs. Without simply darting from one goal to another, they can be more disciplined about ensuring that they are building products that are not only useful, but address a need, and can become habit-forming.
Further, this framework is as simple as it gets -three simple steps. What is great about this, is author is not trying to create a framework that you need to realign with. These are some things you will learn (or would have learnt) as you build products anyways. But by presenting them in three distinct steps, the author makes developing such products a better discipline.
Not to forget, “Hooked” is an easy read, but the concepts will stick for a long time. Replete with real-life examples, the book reinforces the underlying premise – successful products are ones that create a habit within their users.
So, if you are an entrepreneur or a product manager/designer, I highly recommend this as your next read. And, perhaps you can make creating great products a habit too!
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