The Power of Habit

Habits are formed when you start doing a task multiple times for a period. I remember when I started learning to ride my motor bike, there were so many things to take care of like the clutch, brake, switching gears, looking left, right, ahead and behind to look out for other vehicles. Whenever the pillion rider was trying to talk to me, I would shut him off until we reached the destination. In short, too many things to take care of. After getting used to it, now my mind has trained itself and knows what needs to be done. Now I just start my bike and my legs are habituated to start changing gears almost subconsciously, it has developed into a habit!

Similarly, I have installed soft closing hinges to my cabinet drawers at home even if I push the doors hard it will slowly move to a fully closed position, so I don’t have to worry about the annoying sound of a slamming door. I have been using them for a year now. We have a library in our office, I went and picked up a book to read, when closing the doors I just pushed it like I do at home. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. There was a loud noise of the door slamming and everyone around was annoyed.

Pinterest
Pinterest is a great example of a habit-forming product that has become a daily part of my life. I started using it to get some inspiration for the interiors of my house. I found a nice TV unit and wanted to get it done for my house, the next day I got a newsletter from Pinterest with more similar designs which were better than the one I chose. I loved it. My feed has become a visual treat to look at. Now, an endless list of designs keet coming up as I scroll through. I started creating Boards for everything I am interested in. It keeps me excited with new content every time I open the app.

Facebook
Facebook on the other hand chooses the most relevant and engaging stories to show in my news feed. It also prioritizes stories that I like, comment and share. The more engaging the content, the more I keep coming back to Facebook. Ever since Facebook released its auto-playing videos and related videos feature. I started watching more videos on Facebook than Youtube. When you play a video on Facebook, it gives a set of videos that are related to the topic. This feature has kept me hooked and I always end up watching all the videos most of the time.

Newton
I am a fan of read receipts in WhatsApp. When we added read receipts in Newton, I enjoyed using it. After sending an email, if I don’t get a reply, I just go to the email and see if it is read or not, so my expectations are set. If the email is read, then I can be sure that they will reply back when they have time. If not, I can always follow up. Read receipts have become a favourite feature for me, there is no way out. Now, when I think back about my Gmail days, I wonder how I could have lived without the blue ticks ;)

While designing the conversation view for Newton which is a key feature frequently used in the product. We had to add a close button to go back to the inbox list. While working on this, we thought of having an option to click anywhere outside an email to close the preview. We wanted to support both keyboard and mouse, ESC key for keyboard and close icon for mouse (with an option to click anywhere outside an email to close). In the process, we thought what if we just don’t have the close button and let users just click outside an email to close the preview. This design has been working like a charm for our users. A couple of our colleagues were so habituated to this they were trying to close a ticket on the HelpScout app by clicking on the gray area (which doesn’t support this, BTW). Voila! A habit has been formed.

In summary…
A habit is a behaviour to take action with little or no conscious thought. Designing features with the ability to quickly form habits are crucial in creating a successful product. Habits are hard to let go it will also keep the users highly engaged and loyal.