Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

BJ Fogg is an American professor and director of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab, previously referred to as the Persuasive Technology Lab, which investigates different models of human behavior. According to his website, in 2009 Fogg wrote a book called Persuasive Technology in which he described “how computers can be designed to influence attitudes and behaviors,” and made warnings and recommendations on the topic (Fogg, BJ. “BJ Fogg, PhD.” BJFogg.com). He later penned another book called Tiny Habits (2019) about positive behavior change.

Eyal credits Fogg for developing the “Fogg Behavior Model” which argues that all human behaviors are the result of three factors: a trigger to prompt an action, and the motivation and ability to complete it. Eyal borrows Fogg’s model to argue that all habit-forming products must trigger the user in some way, increase their motivation to access the product, and ensure that they are easily able to do so. If any of these factors are missing, Eyal claims that users will not form a habit of using the product.

B. F. Skinner was an American psychologist, inventor, author, philosopher, and professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1948 to 1974. He focused on how human and animal behavior can be shaped by reinforcements. Skinner argued that “human behavior was always controlled by its environment” (“B.F. Skinner.” Harvard University Department of Psychology). As such, Skinner felt that “the future of humanity depended on abandoning the concepts of individual freedom and dignity and engineering the human environment so that behavior was controlled systematically and to desirable ends rather than haphazardly” (“B.F. Skinner”).

Eyal uses Skinner’s experiments on pigeons to support his claim that variable rewards entice further user engagement. Skinner discovered that pigeons would press a lever to discharge food more frequently if the reward varied—that is, if the lever sometimes released food and sometimes did not. Eyal connects these basic animal responses with human psychology, claiming that “Skinner’s pigeons tell us a great deal about what drives our own behaviors” (99). Eyal argues that users respond best to products which provide different kinds of unpredictable rewards. He uses Skinner’s theory about variable rewards as the basis for his own interpretation, in which he identifies three types of rewards: the tribe, the hunt, and the self.