It can create good habits but it can also create addictions. The artificial formation of habits is a double-edged sword. Startups need to keep in mind that their products are in fact changing the world, and with this great superpower comes great responsibility. The further the user is in this journey, the less work you have to do to maintain it. When this habit is well established in their minds, it will create a snowball effect in terms of the effectiveness of your hooks.Īs they start increasingly using your application, an emotional bond in their minds will be created, connecting your product with a function or even an emotion. This process will need to be maintained until a habit is formed. Show them why you’re better first, then remind them of this on a continuous basis until they start using your app without you incentivizing them to do so. This makes Perceived Utility come before the frequency of usage in terms of event hierarchy in the habit zone. The utility aspect of your application is the main gate for your users, users need to know why they are jumping ship before they even consider the idea. People like to try new alternatives if they look appealing, but in contrast, making a user jump ship to your solution is very hard. Even though it has a lower impact on the habit zone than the frequency of usage, in the case of new applications, it's highly expected from your application to be better at doing the job than its older and more established competition. The perceived utility is the reflection of what your users can get out of your application which is missing from your competitors.

This by definition is a habit, you do it without thinking about it, it turns into a background process in your brain. In relation to the habit zone, Twitter’s placement started going up on the Y-axis until the point where it entered the habit zone, when that happened, the process of “Find a reason to use the app then open the app” turned into “open the app then look for things to do on it”. This linear process where the goal of my usage of the app comes before the action of me actually opening the app started dissipating as my usage of the platform increased ( Increase in Frequency). I remember when I first joined Twitter, I used to open the app in a mechanical fashion where for example, the following thought had to cross my mind before opening the app “I wonder what's happening in the world right now, let me check Twitter to see what's going on”. If you have to think about a behavior, it is not a habit.ĭoesn't this sound familiar? When did you actually think of opening your Twitter feed before you actually do? The answer to this in most cases is never. King talks about the anatomy of a habit and how the process of forming habits and changing them really works. Brian King’s publication “How long does it take to form a new habit?” talks about this topic. The question “How frequent is frequent enough?” may not be possible to answer using a formula just yet but in its current state, we can say that the timescale changes between different industries and specifically between different users.ĭr. Unfortunately for companies, there’s still not a universal timescale for turning all behaviors into habits.

Old habits die hard meaning