Do we have a moral obligation to improve the lives of our users and customers? Or is the goal simply to get them addicted to our products and services?

In this episode, Nir Eyal, author of the best-selling book, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products," shares how there IS a way to get people to use your products in a way that benefits their lives, instead of disrupting them.

After founding two tech companies that were both acquired, Nir spent years running experiment after experiment to learn exactly how successful companies were creating products that people couldn’t put down, and his research led him to the conclusion that companies focused on improving the quality of life of their users have the best shot at success.

Today, he shares with us:

• The difference between hooking people and addicting them, and why addiction is NOT the goal of great product design
• Why it’s definitely in a company’s long-term interest to create products that improve the quality of life of their users
• The exact steps you can use to understand the needs and pain points of your users
• How product hunt.com used Nir’s model to generate massive amounts of engagement

You’ll also hear Nir’s take on why making money and helping people are NOT mutually exclusive.

Enjoy!

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:03:06] The goal of Nir’s book, and the difference between habit and addiction
• [00:06:57] Whether companies have moral and ethical obligations to build products that are beneficial to their users
• [00:08:37] The science of addiction
• [00:12:48] How to design products that are habit-forming and improve people’s lives
• [00:14:28] The techniques that help companies discover consumer pain points ● [00:15:38] Insights from Nir’s personal experience about finding internal triggers
• [00:17:44] How Ryan Hoover recognized the opportunity in Product Hunt
• [00:20:26] How to encourage engagement
• [00:21:45] The next steps after building a hook
• [00:26:33} Questions you should ask yourself when designing a product
• [00:28:17] How Nir learned the steps that he recommends
• [00:30:49] Companies that Nir has invested in
• [00:31:35] How you can discover your customers’ internal triggers
• [00:35:23] The importance of understanding customer psychology
• [00:37:41] How companies can use data to understand customers
• [00:38:51] How cohort analysis can explain customer usage of a product
• [00:40:22] How to measure cohorts
• [00:41:57] How companies can tell if their products are having a beneficial impact on their users
• [00:44:04] Why Nir believes that a people-first approach is the most sustainable way to succeed
• [00:46:02] Resources that Nir recommends