Developing an experience that keeps users hooked — Google Pay and the Gamification Hook
This article covers the understanding of the Hook Framework by Nir Eyal and an example of how some apps have championed at implementing this
Our habits form the basis of our behavior. It’s said that if we keep repeating an action over and over again it turns into a habit or second nature so to speak. A Dukes University Research, suggests that about 40% of human behavior is driven by the habits inculcated over time.
If you are a Product Manager/Designer/Thinker, the one question plaguing your mind is — “How do I keep my user glued to this product?”. We often seek to create a toothbrush experience (i.e. ensuring that the user, uses the product at least once/twice per day).
Delivering a solution that is a must-have for your user is one thing. On the other hand, making the experience repetitive or converting it into a habit is a big challenge. The Hook Framework attempts to solve this challenge.
What is the Hook Framework?
The framework comes from the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal which talks about how products/platforms manage to implement this framework well and manage to attract, capture and retain the attention of its users.
The framework put in simple terms is —
Connect a user’s problem to your solution with enough frequency to make it a habit.
It has 4 components laid in a 2x2 matrix -
Trigger
A Trigger is something users see, feel, or think of. It may be accustomed to the experience of their favorite products that they overlook the hooks that first brought them in.
Common features such as email alerts, notifications, or icons can be called External Triggers that are aimed to cue your mind to act.
You may ask yourself about Triggers:
- What gets the user to use your product?
- What does the user really want?
- What are the applicable Triggers for your personas?
- How could you make the Triggers more effective? etc.
Action
Action is the minimum interaction the user needs to have with your product to be rewarded. The harder the Action, the more motivation needed for the users.
The following questions about Actions may be helpful:
- What is the minimum Action the user may take in anticipation of a reward?
- Have you minimized the efforts needed to take the Action?
Reward
The Reward can be considered as the goal or the objective for the user. There are many tunings you can do to manufacture the desire for this reward, beyond just helping the user achieve their goal with the interaction.
The questions you can ask yourself about Rewards are:
- How do you reward your users?
- Is there interesting variability?
- Is there a reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more?
Investment
Whenever users invest their time, efforts, data, or money, they are more likely to return. The investment stage is the fourth step in the Hook model. Here one must seek more data, insights, and understanding from the user. This will help build a motivating Trigger to bring the users back.
The following questions can be asked:
- How do your users load the next Trigger and create preference by investing efforts into your product?
- What is the least bit of work done, to increase the likelihood of a user returning?
Google Pay: The Masters of Gamification
Recently I received a message from a friend, requesting some tickets on the Google Pay app. I had been using Google Pay for a while, but I did not pay heed to the ongoing Gamification campaign.
I fired my app up and navigated to the new section and immediately put two-and-two together and realized this festive season, Google had come up with yet another innovative game, to keep the users “Hooked”.
So how does this one work?
Hook framework is used heavily in gamification and in my honest opinion, Google has mastered the art of both gamification and using Hook Framework.
Learn more about Gamification here.
Trigger: Google has been cheeky here, and by that I mean they have triggered the emotion of FOMO well, they award users ‘tickets’ that allow them to travel on a digital map of India. (that’s the only travel I am getting in 2020)
Action: Simple, make payments, get tickets, and kilometers. Use these to travel across this digital map.
Reward: Upon reaching places, answer quizzes to avail coupons with partnering platforms and cashback rewards up to INR 500.
Investment: Interact with your friends within this game, share tickets, kilometers
Again, who really wins this game?
Google, of course. They have a bunch of users hooked onto a payments platform, during a festive season in the world's second-most populous country. Not only would people use Google Pay now to make payments and do transactions, but they’ll also repeatedly open the app during the day to interact with their friends, share the tickets, etc.
So if there was one takeaway that we could learn from this case study is, that as Product People, we really need to learn to not only attract the attention of our users but we need to retain them, they need to be HOOKED.
If you did like this article and would like to read more about Gamification with case studies, please feel free to read those.
Thank you for reading!
