Stormy Habit Weather

In the USA this winter, Mother Nature has thrown snow into many peoples’ lives. Schedules and internalized daily habits were disrupted through imposed external forces. New opportunities and habits took shape. Some people embraced the moment as a time to create a snow shark.

Glancing at Amazon, I see others read and commented on the Hooked book written by Nir Eyal with contributions from Ryan Hoover.

The recent snow event got me thinking about habits extinguishing and habit competition. Do more people habitually check the weather now? What are they not doing anymore? If a mobile app provided the weather as a side feature during a snow storm, would people use it more? 

The Argus iPhone app has the weather as a daily integrated feature of its personal dashboard of your life. So, I wake up and look at the temperature high/low for the day on Argus while seeing other things like how much sleep I got.



Although it seems much of the focus is currently on building products that form long term habits, I think exploring how to keep people using their products even through stormy habit-disruption times will serve well too.

I invite us all to discuss this in the Facebook Hook Model community.

Why Create A Hook Model Community?

You may ask, why create a facebook community around the Hook Model? Simply put, the Hook Model works well. Really well! You can create products and services that people habitually use. It's the combination of psychology, business and technology. So, it's fun and profitable!

How did I discover the Hook Model? I saw a GSummit 2013 presentation by Nir Eyal, read some of his posts, and finally read twice the book Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products.

Want a taste via video? If you would like, just slide the YouTube video slider below and pick anything to watch for 1 to 2 minutes.

This video above and slides are available on Nir Eyal's blog post "New Video - Hooked the Psychology of How Products Engage Us"

Coming up and co-chaired by Nir Eyal, the Habit Summit is on March 25, 2014. It's where experts "share their hard-won insights on how to build habits (user and personal habits)."

So books, videos and conferences. What was missing? Well, a place where like-minded people could focus as a group on the Hook Model framework, a Hook Model community.

I asked Nir in the Gamification Revolution spreecast The Ethics and Tenants of Habit-Forming Design with Nir Eyal for a community. He suggested I create one. So with his feedback, I created the Hook Model Community

We have discussed Nostalgia, the HabitZone, ATARI acronym, the virtual reality Oculus Rift, and more.

You are invited to come join our Hook Model Community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/hookmodel Although it's free, it's habit forming. ;) Of course, the choice is yours. Hope to see you there!

I Got The "Hooked" Book For Free

I am a fan of Nir Eyal's work around habits and how to apply them in business. Below are slides giving you a taste of some of his work.

Hooked Model from Nir Eyal

Today, I got a great book of his called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. I discovered it from his blog post titled: “HOOKED” BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD (AND $0 FOR THE NEXT 5 DAYS).

It's a collection of his past work and more. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn more about habits, human behavior and applying it to products or services.

Last Quarter Beat Previous Year And It Was Only Two Months Long!

The Mentor Program is going strong! Essential technological knowledge and more is getting shared much more than before I applied Gamification to the program. To dive deeper into the Mentor Program, check out Gamification Meets Technology Mentor Program.

I am the Product Owner / Manager of the program. Due to our company getting bought, our calendar changed. Last quarter consisted of only two months, October and November. Yet, those two months yielded a score of 1010 points which is over twice what it was the year before at 440 in the year of 2012. The year before that it was 600 in that same quarter, October, November and December of 2011.

So, a two month quarter beat previous 3 month quarters!

Income Inequality Learned While Studying Marketing

While studying Product Owner / Gamification related things such as Marketing via Coursera, I ran across income inequality. Wow.

"economic inequality" biggest issue? http://t.co/nckIeMGCd9 - See video http://t.co/XnW4s14358 - "wealth #inequality meme" going viral?

— Michael Finney (@finneycanhelp) December 8, 2013

Wow. Watch the video, really.

Oculus Rift Love At First Sight

Today a friend and I checked out the Oculus Rift recently made available for developers. It's love at first sight!

I was able to immerse myself into a world where there were beautiful things like a butterfly, water fountain, a house and a sea.  I could even see inside some things! As I was experiencing the world and got close to things, my imagination would soar! I asked myself, what would it feel like to touch that sunflower? My mind imagined what things would feel like as I got close to them.

That's something that has evolved in our brains. After we identify something as friend or foe, we anticipate what something is going to sound or feel like. The anticipation itself was exciting!

What's even more exciting are the real world solutions this technology will enable. Easy to imagine solutions involve surgery training and learning through immersive exploration. Other applications could be in helping people understand what it's like to be in a certain place or a person who is in a certain socioeconomic status such as being poor or conversely privileged.

Although I could not effect the virtual world around me, people are using the Oculus Rift in conjunction with other technology in order to be able to have such interactive experiences. A video example is Hydradeck Oculus Rift Demo.

There will be user experience challenges. As Peter Hornsby pointed out in The Oculus Rift and User Experience, motion sickness will be an issue for some people. I saw that today as someone else tried the system out. However, I think that issue can be minimized if the system is properly calibrated and systems are designed well.

Similar to the iPhone, I believe we are at the beginning of a new era of experience and perhaps understanding.

515% Lift? Gamification and Mentor Program

I am the Product Manager aka Chairperson of an internal company effort known as the Mentor Program. It's our mission to empower people to share technological and other essential knowledge with each other. To dive deeper into the Mentor Program, check out Gamification Meets Technology Mentor Program.

We had a fantastic last quarter (July, August, September):

• Our program goal was 1600. We did twice that at 3200!
• Compared to FY13Q2 of 520 points, 3200 is a 515% increase year over year (YOY)!  

I believe increased productivity, morale, self-esteem, and a sense of empowerment has also resulted. 

Some of the new elements added / changed in this last quarter are:

• Badges have a new easy to understand theme with a level of progression on them via stars
• We added leaderboards that shows how the different departments are doing as instructors and students
• Although not new, I have an awesome team of people dedicated to this effort!

Most of all, it's fun! 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, Mike Finney. My favorites are LinkedIn and twitter.