Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

By: Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover

Narrated by: Nir Eyal

Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Note to Audible Listeners: As of December 2019, this version of the Hooked audiobook has been revised and rerecorded to greatly improve audio quality. Please disregard any reviews mentioning poor audio quality prior to December 2019.

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hooked Model", a four-step process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive cycles through the hook, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Hooked is a guide to building products people use because they want to, not because they have to. Written for product managers, designers, marketers, startup founders, and people eager to learn more about the things that control our behaviors, this audiobook gives listeners:

• Practical insights to create user habits that stick.
• Actionable steps for building products people love.
• Behavioral techniques used by Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other habit-forming products.
• New for second edition! An additional case study for building health habits.

Nir Eyal distilled years of research, consulting, and practical experience to write a manual for creating habit-forming products. Nir has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. His writing on technology, psychology, and business appears in the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. He is also the author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

©2014 Nir Eyal (P)2014 Nir Eyal

Great book, wish the narration was a little better.

Loved the insight on this book provides. It has changed my entire outlook on how and why I use the every day products I use. Great for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you can make it through the narration, you'll definitely get your money's worth.

Thank you captain obvious

This book only scratch the surface by providing some very basic examples that should be known even by someone in a jr. product position. A good example of book written by the academic world that is completely disconnected from the real business/product design world. Total waste of time.

Will Be Putting Hooked into Action

Awesome book, with real actionable and easily understandable concepts. I am in the process of beginning a startup and Nir's guidance is invaluable. His moral compass is what every entrepreneur needs.

Interesting concept, boring narration

This book was recommended to me by a colleague. It provided a useful framework to identify and amplify habit forming ideas. Some of the visuals lost in audible can be found online and very helpful.
The hard part is to keep engaged with such a monotonous narration...

Worst reading I've heard in about 40 Audible books

I couldn't tell if this was read by a human or computer. It is the first Audible book I have read where the narration was so bad as to make listeningb difficult.

This was too long and torture to listen to

The performance was fine, but honestly, it could have been 50 pages long and I could’ve done everything with just the guides. Reading and listening to this is torture. Like most business books, it could have been condensed significantly. It was too long just so the author and the publisher could make money. Plus, if you have an advanced degree in business or a thorough business education, you can figure some of this out on your own because it’s intuitive. Ugh.

Narrators shouldn't sound like commercials

Hooked is a great book - part of the canon of product development, and a good listen even with numerous references to charts or diagrams in the printed edition that don't translate into audio. However, the narrator on this book sounds like he's narrating an ad for a time-share. He's not telling a story, and the tempo and modulation of his voice are quite distracting. That takes away from what is an otherwise good read.

Great content, but not a great audio-book

What made the experience of listening to Hooked the most enjoyable?

Interesting concepts.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He fumbled with words frequently and the audio quality felt a little off. I would recommend that they re-record this book or at least fix certain sections. I found it very distracting.

It was missing a Chapter and end credits

The content was good. The problem was the book is missing chapters as well as end credits.

Needs to be fixed.

Hope they update this book for those that already purchased it.

Amazing Book! But they switched readers :-(

Have you listened to any of Dave Wright’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I listened to the version of this book read by Nir Eyal. But when I decided to download it to my computer, it had changed to being read my this guy. Nir Eyal is WAY better!!! I have no idea why they switched. Luckily I still have the Nir Eyal version downloaded on my phone.

If I were you, I would contact Audible and request the Nir Eyal version.

Any additional comments?

This book has given me so many insights into my daily behavior as well as the behavior of those around me.

Can't listen to narrator

Narrator makes the unbearable with his almost AI voice. Better to get the printed version.

Probably good book killed by the reading

What did you like best about Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products? What did you like least?

The reading. It was like someone fed the text to a text-to-speech programme. It made it impossible to actually listen to the content.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Dave Wright?

Practically anyone else.

Any additional comments?

I have to get it in printed/digital format so I can actually get what the book is about.

Terrible Terrible Terrible Narration

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

I can't get into it because of the narration.

Has Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products put you off other books in this genre?

No

Would you be willing to try another one of Dave Wright’s performances?

Definitely not. He reads with no understanding of the subject matter. It is impossible to follow and a robot would be better.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I am sure the subject matter is good but I can't get into it.

Any additional comments?

Quality narration is the obvious key to audiobooks

Don't buy

This book sounds like it's read by a computer voice. It's hard to say if it's just a really bad reader or if it's just a scam and actually read by a computer voice.

Interesting book, boring reader.

This was a really hard book to complete because the reader might as well have been reading entries in the phone book. There was no hint that he understood anything he was reading and so it was all delivered in a flat monotone.

Horrible narration.

I'm an hour in and I have to give up. The reader sounds so robotic that no information is sinking in. It's all melding into one.

Really poor narration

Read this book and tried to give it a second "reading" via Audible. However the narrator is so bad I couldn't get through the first few chapters.

Eye opener

This book was ahead of its time. Breaks down the processes the digital world uses. Came here after reading indistractable

Very informative

I liked the way the information is broken down and how you’re taken through each stage of the hooked Model. I’ll definitely be listening to it again as it has some very useful information if you’re a UX designer wanting to understand the aspects of habit forming within products/applications.

amazing!!!

I love this book, straight to the point with the facts and answers, I'm training to become a product markeer and I feel like I found the book for me.