Psych Design Series #2: The Habit Loop
So, its been a month since my last post here on Medium. Intentional habits are so hard to stick to, yet so easy to break if its not yet glued into your system. So, here I am trying to get back on track with my Monday writing habit.
Did you know that almost all of what we do in our lives are driven by some sort of habit? Yes, you heard it right. Most of the time, we act on something automatically because our brain distinguishes some signal (cue), and so it performs some actions (routine), because it is craving for a satisfying outcome (reward). This is what we call the habit loop. This loop is invisible most of the time as we go on with our lives. But if you come to think about it, and observe how the people around you, including yourself, act and respond to certain activities on a daily basis, you will notice some sort of pattern. That pattern exist because of people’s habits.
I’ve put a list of examples to show what I mean.
The habit loop starts with a cue (or trigger), and ends with a reward.
The habit loop is the brain’s system of organizing stuff. It’s actually your brain’s coping mechanism to deal with a million information every day. Anything that comes through our 5 senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch) is a piece of data our brain needs to interpret. And the brain can get overwhelmed too, and in order not to, it will categorize stuff into mini habit loops, so whenever you encounter a certain cue, your brain will check if a neural connection exist for that cue, and if its existing, it will fire up that neural pathway which contains the routines that you usually do when you encounter that cue. So, you when you do something that already exists in your brain’s habit loop list, you are doing it less consciously already, so your brain can save some of its energy on other important areas — these are the stuff that needs you to actively think / decide what to do. Our brain really has a brilliant system going on to help us survive, if you come to think about it.
Now, you may wonder, why should there be a reward after a routine? It is because in order for some actions to actually become a habit, there should be some type of reward at the end of a routine, that the brain can crave to achieve. The brain can then link that reward to a specific cue. And when that cue happens, your brain will be on a craving mode to get the reward, which will be the reason why you do a certain routine — to achieve that reward in the end. A reward is something that makes you feel good, and the brain always wants that — an increase in “happy hormones”.
In this case, the routine is actually a changeable action — if say, you want to change bad habits into good ones, or change a consumer’s buying habit to favor your product.
If you need more clear samples of what I mean about the habit loop, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg is a great book to read. I got hooked reading his book, because he explained various scenarios how habits affect the results we get in real life — from laboratory experiments, to sports / business success & failures. And nothing interests me more than knowing the psychological (even neurological) aspect as to why humans behave in a certain way.
Now that we know what a habit loop is, let’s take a look at how some products (including digital ones) are marketed in this way to be effective.
- Foodpanda — Their ad & splash page sometimes goes with this line, “Hungry? Crave. Click. Eat. Repeat”. They want to make you use their app to easily order food when you are hungry. So being hungry is your cue. The routine will be using their app to get food. The reward will be the food delivered (minus the hassle of going out).
- Cereals — Their ad shows a breakfast setting, with a tagline, “A great way to start the day.” So, in a way, they want to make you think of getting breakfast as a cue for you to eat cereals (which maybe the one they are advertising).
Most advertisements, in one way or another, target a specific scenario in our daily lives, so whenever that scenario happens, we can easily remember their product, and might as well remember to buy it when we hit to the stores. More so, if you are already using their product and incorporating it already in your life on a daily basis, it will be hard to forget their product, or have a day go by without those products you already got used to. This is the major goal of most businesses — to make their products a part of our daily lives. In this way, they can profit more.
As I learned about the habit loop recently, I find it funny to think how I get used to ordering dinner meal at work before through Foodpanda. At that time, they are giving as much as 50% discount, and other different kinds of discounts every month. They vary the percentage or which cuisine / restaurant to give discount to. And, I just want to have more value with my food budget, and its also nice to try out new food once in a while (until it became once-a-week — to every once-in-a-few-days kind of thing.) I don’t order as much as my workmates do, but there is not a week without Foodpanda. It came to a point where we still order through their app, even if the discounts are gone. As you can see, Foodpanda already became part of our dinner habit.
There are many more examples of how marketers allure us into spending for their products. What I mentioned are only a few of them. As you can see, habits are very powerful, that they can change human behavior. Knowing the core of habits, which is the habit loop, you now have the key ingredient to make positive changes in your lives (increase productivity, success, etc.). If you just want to use the habit loop technique in your app design or marketing strategy, feel free to do so. A lot of people are already using it anyway.
The tricky part is finding the right “cue”. So, whenever you do something, always keep asking “why” backwards — that’s how you find the real cue / cause of some certain actions. The real cue will be a major factor on how you can change a specific action / routine after that cue happens.
