Scan barcode
A review by levininja
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
5.0
Really excellent short read about how to make habit forming digital products. Loved this hook cycle and all the examples.
The ethical implications of having this knowledge is profound. He has a chapter about how you need to consider the ethics, including a really interesting four quadrants chart about the ethics of manipulation. Clearly one quadrant is definitely ethical and ideally we would always develop products this way, and one is definitely not. The other two are problematic in different ways which he explains.
But my question is: did Nir consider the ethics of making this book? How many of his readers are going to make ethical vs non ethical products? If the negative results outweigh the positive, wouldn’t it have been better for him to have never published this book to begin with? Normally I’m all about publishing information but my perception is that the vast majority of apps are not being developed altruistically. The vast majority of social media, video games, and certain other categories of apps definitely have a much more negative effect on society than positive. There are some categories that are more positive and many that are neutral. I don’t know. As a software engineer myself, this whole question has had me in a quandary for a while.
The ethical implications of having this knowledge is profound. He has a chapter about how you need to consider the ethics, including a really interesting four quadrants chart about the ethics of manipulation. Clearly one quadrant is definitely ethical and ideally we would always develop products this way, and one is definitely not. The other two are problematic in different ways which he explains.
But my question is: did Nir consider the ethics of making this book? How many of his readers are going to make ethical vs non ethical products? If the negative results outweigh the positive, wouldn’t it have been better for him to have never published this book to begin with? Normally I’m all about publishing information but my perception is that the vast majority of apps are not being developed altruistically. The vast majority of social media, video games, and certain other categories of apps definitely have a much more negative effect on society than positive. There are some categories that are more positive and many that are neutral. I don’t know. As a software engineer myself, this whole question has had me in a quandary for a while.