The Art of Digital Addiction

We live in an age of digital addiction. Technology companies are getting us hooked into their bits and bytes. Some succeed. Most fail. Those who succeed learn that there are certain product design patterns which tap into our psychology. Those who succeed no longer need to tell us what to do via an email or a push notification. We take action voluntarily because we are hooked.

What makes you addicted to apps? Why do so many of us constantly tap the Facebook icon for perhaps no reason at all? Why do so many people pass hundreds, if not thousands of hours in games like World of Warcraft or Clash of Clans?

They are all product design patterns. Features built into the products which tap into human psychology. The more successful tech products out there have mastered the art of digital addiction. Initially through trial and error, and later through internal teams of psychologists working to further decipher our brains and how to make us spend even more precious minutes of our lives in their products.

How are such experiences created? And is this manipulation ethically correct? Let’s look into it. I’ll share what I learned along the way.

The Roots

Although the topic in itself is perhaps common sense for those working in technology, I first stumbled across it from a more practical point of view back in 2017 at a tech conference in San Francisco, where I spent several months that year while working for Evernote. Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm, presented a framework developed by one of their partners — “Tavel’s Hierarchy of Engagement”. It was one of the criterias they derived for assessing whether a technology product can reach a $1 billion valuation — t he so called ‘Unicorn’.

Source: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-5803bf4e6cfa

Looking back at it now, I don’t think there is anything particularly special about this framework. It’s very basic. However, the reality is that most technology companies don’t understand the basics. And frankly most people working in technology don’t get them either.

For me personally, there were 3 things I took away from Greylock’s presentation, which went to affect my future work in technology:

Identifying and focussing on one core action is paramount. Whether from a marketing point of view, or when building products.
Getting users to ‘deposit’ (or invest) something in your product is important for making them come back.
Those users who find your core action intuitive, and have invested something into the product, e.g. data, are very likely to stick around and continue taking the action and investing more.

These learnings, although simple and perhaps common sense, are important for any and all products.

Every product has its own core action users should complete. Those companies which successfully and hopefully early on identify this core action, will win the lottery of growth.

However, this framework was developed as a high-level observation of various technology companies. It never explored the theoretical foundation, which is actually in psychology.

And precisely that psychological foundation is what I define as the “Art of Digital Addiction”. Let’s go even deeper.

The Realm of Psychology

After that conference I have began exploring literature on this topic as well as taking note of different products I use. I was keen to understand whether there is a secret formula for building addictive products. Well, the truth, there is and there isn’t. Like any company you build, you will always rely on solving a problem for some users and having a bit of luck.

However, having said that, there are certain principles which should be kept in mind when building digital products. One book in my opinion stands above all of them in this topic: “Hooked” by Nir Eyal.

Nir Eyal defined the ‘Hook Model’, which highlights 4 key ingredients to building a deep connection between a user and a digital product: 1) Trigger, 2) Action, 3 Variables Reward, 4) Investment. Let’s look at them one by one.

The Trigger

This is what causes the user to take an action in your product. Triggers can be external, e.g. an email or an app notification, or internal — triggered by your own internal desire or habit to use the product. Your goal is to move as many users from relying on external triggers to internal triggers. That is hard, but that is what hooks people.

To quote Eyal: “New habits are sparked by external triggers, but associations with internal triggers are what keeps users hooked.”.

In order to create internal triggers you need the user to form a habit. Habit forming will initially be guided by external triggers and how well a user passes through the hook model cycle. Once a user has completed the hook cycle sufficient times, slowly habits will begin to form. This means more and more of your users will use your product without needing the prompt by external triggers.

Here is an example from Lucidchart — a fantastic tool for visualising almost anything. This is an email they send you when you have a free account. Prompting you to go and take a core action inside of the product (creating a document).

Here is an example from Strava — a social sports tracking app. Once you are connected to a few people in the app, they send you emails if someone you know has completed an activity. In the email the user is often asked to complete a single core action.

The Action

The action is the intended behaviour you want the user to complete. As we looked at above in Tavel’s hierarchy of engagement — this is the same as your core action. Of course, your product is very likely to be different, and you might have a couple of core actions, but these have to be well defined and measurable. Everything you do thereafter in the realm of marketing or building further features, should be aimed with the intention of getting the user to complete these core actions.

Following on from the Lucidchart example above, once you are in your account, one of their goals is to get you to create more documents (or in my case, also convert me to a paid user). The more documents you create, the more valuable you become to them as a user, but that is already going into the “Investment” phase, which we’ll talk about in a moment.

Strava — Very simple to add a new activity.

And let’s also look at Strava again. They make it very simple to record a new activity in the product. This is either done by having clear “Record Activity” actions all over their product, or also by building auto data sync integrations with companies such as Garmin.

The Variable Reward

Now this is where it gets interesting and I personally believe this concept, along with the next ‘Investment’ phase are the key ingredients in building addictive products.

Humans like the unpredictable. We seek it everywhere. From holidays into unknown places, to visiting new local restaurants. From trying a new computer game, to browsing your Instagram feed. All of these themes draw us to them because there is something new. And we generally get bored and disengaged from routine things.

There is a good saying we all know: “Curiosity killed the cat”. And it applies here as well. We are curious by nature, and as long as there is something new to experience we will persevere in what we are doing.

Now take this concept and apply it to a digital product. No better way to do this than to look at a couple of examples:

Endless information feeds. Whether you are browsing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Strava, or your list of Airbnb properties — there is a feed powered by some nasty algorithm which seems to show us very relevant information. And we keep scrolling wanting to know what is below the fold. Our finger just keeps moving along the screen, or perhaps your mouse scrolls down, while your brain is lost in the action. You are hooked.
Random rewards in games. You are doing a quest in a computer game. During the quest you receive various rewards. These always differ and you don’t always know what you’ll get. So you keep doing more and more quests expecting more unpredictable rewards. You are hooked yet again.

Rewards have another dimension to them, which Eyal calls “Rewards of the Self”. These often come in the form of personal achievements and very often are used in games. However, these concepts are now being taken out of games and being applied across other digital products. Hence the term “gamification” was coined.

Rewards of the self are more personal though. They often come as points, badges, or other similar digital ‘items’ you collect as you do something inside a product. Collecting these becomes a game, and guess what, it is part of getting you hooked on the product.

Let’s look at a few examples below.

Back to Strava. They do this extremely well across the entire product. This got me using Strava and yes I am somewhat hooked, but I don’t mind since it gets me moving around a lot and I like the data it gives me.

First of all you have a feed (like Facebook) with an endless scroll. You just keep scrolling down and new entries appear (powered by yet another magical relevancy algorithm). For each entry you can give a kudos and comment (just like Facebook). Our brains love these feeds. Always the unknown coming from below the fold. We crave for it.

Once you complete an activity in Strava, you see your achievements for that particular activity. More gamification.

Strava — Feed and achievements for individual activity

You can also sign up to challenges, and if you complete them, you get trophies (something to be proud of). What is also important here is your progress toward completing a challenge. It is part of the game. Watching the progress bar go up after doing a run (in case of Strava). Or watching your experience bar go up after killing a monster in a game. We humans love this — steady progress toward a visible goal.

Another good example is Stack Overflow — a Q&A website for developers, where you get points and badges for engaging with the community, which in return unlock certain new things on the platform. These make your account stand out, and they make you seem more knowledgeable in the community. And in the case of Stack Overflow, this can also help you land a new job.

And we obviously need an example from gaming. One particular company could be said to have mastered this — Blizzard. Across all of their games they created a powerful system of achievements which many gamers endlessly chase after. Here is an example from Starcraft 2, one of Blizzard’s flagship games. You get achievements for doing different things in-game. From completing several normal missions, to beating a computer or other players on extreme difficulty.

This in-game achievement system is a masterpiece for hooking players. Something that has earned Blizzard and other games hundreds of millions of dollars.

Investment

This last phase is the glue. You can think of it the following way: the more you put in a digital product, the more valuable it becomes for you. In most cases you are investing data and time into a product.

Let’s close the Strava loop. In case of Strava you are constantly pumping data into it and making connections with people (if you are the social type). The more you do this, the more valuable the product becomes. You get performance trends, you can understand how much sports you’ve done in the last months, or years. And you also building up your sports reputation amongst friends and wider community members.

Very important though, is when a user invests data into your product, you have to make it easily available. In the Strava example above, they visualise all your sports data, progress toward achievements, etc. Making it easy to see what you have invested into them.

Another great example are products such as Evernote, where if you got into the habit of adding data into it (notes, receipts, etc.), then you eventually get to a point where you are almost locked to the product. You have invested so much data and time into it, you will most likely continue to use it for many years to come.

Similarly to Strava, Evernote makes it very easy to find the notes you created.

A Final Note

Although basic in their foundation, both Tavel’s Hierarchy of Engagement and as well as Eyal’s Hook Model, show us something important — certain ingredients do exist for making digital products more addictive.

If you are startup trying to build a successful digital product, or you already have an established digital product, following the above mentioned principles will help you stay on track toward improving your product.

However, “with great power comes great responsibility”, always remember that it is people like you and me whom you are attempting to hook on a product. So make sure it adds value to their lives. Don’t be senseless and selfish in thinking only about money. Social responsibility is a concept too many technology companies ignore entirely. That shouldn’t be the case.

Play fair. Be nice. And build a better future with the power of technology which has been given to us.