How Companies like Apple, Facebook (And Others) Build Habit-Forming Products

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It’s been over four years since Hooked was first published and that bright yellow cover still manages to catch my eye throughout the workday. (It sits beneath my desk lamp.)

Four years is almost an eternity in modern tech, but the lessons Nir Eyal first published in Hooked are more relevant today than ever.

Games, consumer technology, even B2B technology have taken hold of people’s behavior in ways we haven’t seen before.

People can’t put their phones down. They tweet, spend hours on Facebook, and even create rules in order to stay disciplined with their time spend with technology.

Eyal, an entrepreneur turned behavioral scientist, wanted to know what companies like Apple and Facebook (and now countless others) were doing differently to create such habit-forming products.

Hooked was both his study and findings from that.

I recently sat down with Eyal to talk about all things Hooked, including how companies successfully create habits, how we as consumers can increase our awareness of the forces at play, and the ethics of it all.

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