Building Product Manufacturers that form strong user habits enjoy many benefits to their bottom line. Instead of expensive marketing, these manufacturers link their products and services to the user’s routines and emotions. In his national bestseller How To Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal discusses why some products capture attention while others crash and burn. What types of building products engage specifiers and architects out of sheer habit? How do building products hook design professionals?

Product Specification Habits

According to the author Eyal “seventy-nine percent of smartphone users check their device within fifteen minutes of waking up every morning.” Technologies have turned into habits, compulsions, and in worst case scenarios they have resulted in addictions. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other technological wonders and monstrosities can pull users in for several hours. How many hours has your Uncle Ned wasted watching Youtube videos about stupid pet tricks? A Labrador Retriever dancing the Merengue is fun to watch but nine hours of this stuff will turn your brain to mush. Scientists define habits as automatic behaviors triggered by situational cues. The ultimate question is how do building product manufacturers create products that are habit forming?

Getting Architects Hooked

In Eyal’s book, he discusses what he discovered after years of research in Silicon Valley. He developed the Hook Model which states “through consecutive cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.” Columbian drug cartels have used the Hook Model with great success but we discourage our readers from becoming international drug lords. The Hook Model consists of four phases which include: the trigger, action, variable reward, and investment. Habit forming building products start by alerting architects with external triggers like an e-mail, website link, or promotion for the manufacturer’s AIA online education course.

Following the trigger comes the action. For example, the architect clicks to enroll in the manufacturer’s online AIA course after reading an enticing course description. The AIA online course looks interesting to the architect and it's free of charge which motivates the architect to participate. After concluding the course and receiving their AIA LU, the architect decides to visit the manufacturer’s website. The variable reward is the third phase of the Hook Model. During this phase, the architect discovers what they intended to find such as guide specs, BIM resources, drawings, technical resources, and other items of interest. Before you know it the architect has spent an hour on the product manufacturer’s website.

Investing in Architects

The final phase in the Hook Model is the Investment phase. According to the author, “the investment phase implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, starting preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use features.” Building product manufacturers can collect website data such as preferences to increase the user experience for the next go-around. Information can be reviewed for R&D to improve the building product and make it even more useful to designers. Our lives are effected by habit-forming technology every day via smartphones, tablets, laptops, and TVs. Building product manufacturers can increase their connectivity to specifiers, architects, engineers, interior designers, and other professionals by collecting and processing data which indicates user’s habits.

Ultimately, the Hook Model should be used to help architects maker better choices as judged by themselves. Building product manufacturers should create products that improve the construction industry and offer designers solutions to every day problems. We will dive deeper into the Hook Model in future blog posts. How does your company motivate architects to use your products? How do your building products hook design professionals?