Take Douyin as an example, how to create an addictive product

Let’s recall, does such a scene happen often: I’m lying in bed getting ready to go to bed, I pick up my phone and think about scrolling through TikTok for 5 minutes before going to sleep. As a result, the more I scroll, the more excited I become. Unknowingly, 1 Hours have passed. In fact, this is a manifestation of addiction to TikTok. So what makes Douyin so addictive for users? How can product managers learn from Douyin’s product design methods to create a product that can make users addicted?

The structure of this article: the first half talks about how Douyin makes users addicted; the second half outputs the methodology and talks about how product managers create a product that makes users addicted.

1. How does Douyin make users addicted?

The book "Addiction" summarizes the circumstances under which users will be willing to use a product again after using it. The core reasons are nothing more than three psychological factors. :

1. "Feel good, do it again" - that is, the product is well designed and users want to use it again after using it once.

2. "Just a little bit closer, try again" - that is, the product creates a situation where the user is just a little bit close to achieving the goal, making the user reluctant to give up and want to try again.

3. "It might be good, try again" - that is, the product gives users daydreams, creates a situation that may have good results, and gives users the urge to try again.

Douyin products completely capture these three psychology of users.

1. The user experience of Douyin is very good, making users "feel good" when using it. Compared with other video software, Douyin has the following main advantages in user experience design:

1. Good visual experience: It adopts full-screen high-definition playback mode, no black windows, no blur, User immersion is excellent.

2. Good listening experience: Douyin’s product positioning is music short video software, so music is a key element of Douyin products. Most of the short videos on Douyin are accompanied by brainwashing music. It has to be said that many songs today are popular from Douyin. Even KTV has launched a special section for Douyin songs. It can be seen that Douyin has done a lot in terms of listening experience. Be careful.

3. Personalized recommendations are highly accurate: From Toutiao to Douyin, ByteDance’s products have always done well in personalized recommendation algorithms. Accurate personalized recommendations are the key to Douyin’s success. key factors.

2. Douyin captures the user’s “just a little bit” mentality.

The videos on Douyin are all relatively short videos. After users watch a short video, they will have an inner narration of "One more, it won't take up much time." This inner narration is It will appear after each short video ends, and it will continue to loop, making it difficult for users to stop voluntarily. This mentality of "just one more item will not take up much time" is very similar to the "just a little bit" in the principle of addiction. They both take advantage of people's psychology of "just a little bit" and "just a little bit".

3. Douyin has also successfully captured the user psychology of “it might be good”.

When users browse Douyin, because they cannot predict the content of the next short video, they will switch to it with the mentality that the next short video may be better. This kind of randomness caused by unpredictability , Uncertainty arouses users' excitement more than certain information, so users will continue to browse.

4. Douyin also has the following characteristics in terms of addiction.

1. Maintain the user's excitement value: You can switch to the next video with a simple swipe, so that the user's excitement value is always kept at the highest point, and it is also ByteDance's For the "Volcano Video" product, to switch to the next video, you need to return to the main menu first, then select your favorite video cover from the video list, and then click on the video to watch it. In the "Return-Select-Click" operation, the user The excitement value will drop more or less, and the drop in excitement value can easily cause users to quit. Douyin adopts a "feeding" method, which makes the user experience extremely continuous and leaves users no time to think about "leaving", causing users to linger on Douyin.

2. Let the video uploader show a more beautiful side: Douyin launched the beautification function of filters and special effects from the beginning, making the video uploader more beautiful than reality, in line with the user's imagination. The social psychology of gaining praise and recognition from others.

3. Create a moment of enlightenment: The short videos on Douyin are not only funny videos, but also some videos that convey positive energy in life. Users will react when they see such videos. A moment of realization. Psychological research shows that this cognitive moment of enlightenment is an important moment for users to deepen their impression of the product.

2. How to create products that make users addicted

2.1 Principle of addiction

According to the principle of addiction introduced in the book "Looking for Fun", happiness is because A certain behavior activates the "pleasure circuit" on the inner side of the brain, causing the brain to release "dopamine". The released "dopamine" makes people feel happy. This kind of happiness can easily make people obsessed and addicted. Therefore, if you want to make people addicted to a product, you need the product to activate the "pleasure circuit" in the inner part of the brain. David Linden, the author of "Looking for Feelings", has shown through experiments that six behaviors: information, games, gambling, donation, eating, and exercise, will activate the "pleasure circuit" on the inside of people's brains and release "dopamine", thus making them feel better. People are obsessed and addicted.

Information: Contains news, gossip, rumors and other information, which people are naturally fascinated by.

Games: People can achieve goals and gain pleasure in games, and people become addicted to this pleasure.

Gambling: Uncertain rewards can produce pleasure. Once people like this pleasure, it is difficult to extricate themselves.

Donation: Charitable acts can make people feel satisfied, so some people become addicted to donating.

Eating: When humans eat high-fat, high-sugar, and high-calorie foods, their brains release a large amount of dopamine. The "dopamine" released makes people feel happy, and this kind of happiness can easily make people obsessed and addicted.

Exercise: Exercise can increase the levels of opioid peptides and endocannabinoids in the brain, and the increase in opioid peptides and endocannabinoids indirectly activates the brain to release dopamine, making people obsessed and addicted.

2.2 Three kinds of thinking logic of addiction

The book "Addiction" describes three kinds of addictive thinking logic:

1. "Feel good, do it again ”

2. “It’s almost, let’s do it again”

3. “It might be better, let’s do it again”

“ "Feel good, come again": that is, if the product is well designed, users will want to use it again after using it once. "Feel good, do it again" is the simplest addictive thinking logic, and it is also a product design method that all product managers subconsciously understand. A product must at least make users feel good when using it, so that it will bring users to use it next time and make users addicted.

For example, games must be at least fun to make users addicted; restaurants must be at least delicious to make users addicted; information must be at least good-looking to make users addicted...

"Just a little bit , do it again”: That is, the product creates a situation for users in which they are almost able to achieve their goals, making users reluctant to give up and want to try again. "Just a little bit, try again" is particularly widely used in games. In real shopping malls, every time you play a doll machine, you first grab the doll, and then throw the doll away before the claws of the doll reach the hole. Users feel a sense of pity that they were so close to getting the doll. The principle of "just a little bit" is also widely used in electronic games. The once popular WeChat game "Jump Jump" will make users feel a pity every time they fail. If you are just a little bit close, you can jump on the box. The feeling of success. Of course, it’s not just games. The addictive logic of “just a little bit” will also be applied to the design of other products. With Pinduoduo’s price bargaining function, the first cut will always cut off a large part of the price, and then the price will be cut off more and more. It gets smaller and smaller, but each cut gives the user a psychological feeling that they are just a little bit closer to getting the product.

"It might be good, try again": That is, the product gives users daydreams, creates a situation where there may be good results, and makes users have the urge to try again. Psychological research shows that people are more likely to be fascinated by uncertain rewards than deterministic rewards. Gambling and lottery all use this psychological characteristic, which is why so many people are fascinated by them.

2.3 How to create a “feel-good” product

Feeling good is nothing more than making a good product and making it so that users feel good about it. Daniel Kahneman once mentioned the "peak-end principle" in "Thinking Fast and Slow", that is, when people recall an experience, they will only remember the peak (the best moment or the worst moment) and the final value of the experience. Especially deep memory. The process of a user using a product is an experience. The user's impression of the product after using the product is most profoundly affected by the peak and final values ​​during the use process. Simply put, the best (or worst) side of the product determines the user's impression of the product. Product reviews. For example, if a product freezes during use and the phone crashes, and the product does not have a more prominent peak, the user will have a particularly bad impression of the product due to the lag; similarly, if a product is used during use There is a little lag in the product, but the product solves the urgent needs of the user. Users are more likely to remember the good side of the product when it solves the needs, and forget about the lag of the product.

Users’ feelings about a product come from the product’s peak and final value experience. One way to create a “feel-good” product is to put more effort into the product’s peak and final value. According to the method introduced in the book "Behavioral Design: Creating Peak Experience", product managers can use four methods to create the peak of the product. The four methods are to create moments of joy, create moments of breakthrough recognition, provide moments of glory, and create Moments of connection.

2.3.1 Moments of joy

Moments of joy refer to when a product exceeds expectations and goes beyond the usual experience. Deliberately creating moments of joy can be achieved by enhancing users’ sensory enjoyment, increasing product excitement, and breaking users’ thinking patterns.

Improve users’ sensory enjoyment: The senses include not only vision, but also hearing, taste, smell, and touch, collectively referred to as the “five senses.” The Douyin product mentioned earlier in this article provides users with extraordinary visual and auditory enjoyment. It is really difficult for purely online Internet products to focus on taste, smell, and touch, but O2O products can add some thought to taste, smell, and touch.

Increase product irritation: When increasing product irritation, you cannot add it randomly. You must work hard on stimulation that helps improve user efficiency, that is, use pressure to help users improve efficiency. For example, there are many learning software nowadays that require users to deposit some money in advance. After the user clocks in and studies for a certain number of days, the money they deposited can be returned. This is using pressure to encourage users to work hard. In the same way, there are also products that use paid-for book rentals by the day. The method encourages users to read and learn quickly; reading software uses the method of writing book reviews to complete tasks to unlock the next book, urging users to have a shaped output after learning.

Breaking users’ thinking patterns: It refers to breaking through users’ thinking scripts, breaking users’ expectations, and giving users some unexpected surprises.

Using this principle, product design can consider adding random new events, Easter eggs or red envelopes to make the product more mysterious, and use people's love of "gambling" to stimulate the brain to secrete more dopamine, making users more addicted.

2.3.2 Moment of recognition

Moment of recognition refers to the moment when people are suddenly awakened and enlightened by the truth. People will remember this moment deeply. For example, people's stereotype is that people should eat less meat to lose weight, but "Grain Brain" tells people that they should eat more meat and less carbohydrates to lose weight. This kind of moment that breaks people's original cognition is a cognitive moment, and people are particularly susceptible to it. remember. There are two ways to deliberately create moments that break through cognition: using reality to "trip" users, and breaking through users' inherent cognition. For the Douyin products listed above, users often encounter a lot of knowledge-enhancing content such as daily life tips, work encyclopedias, etc. when watching short videos. Some content can indeed break people's inherent cognition and solve problems in life. Some small problems give users a feeling of "it can still be like this", which makes users remember the product deeply.

2.3.3 Moments of Glory

Glory can make others respect themselves more. Respect needs belong to the fourth level in Maslow’s needs model and are human nature. Human beings naturally like to gain glory and show off themselves. The product is deliberately created so that the user's moment of glory can gain the user's favorability and make the user more addicted to the product. Product managers can provide users with moments of glory from three perspectives, gain recognition, overcome challenges and show courage.

Obtaining recognition: It is to let others recognize yourself. Just imagine when you were a child and you were praised in public by your teacher. If the product can create a scene of praise, then users will naturally feel happy. Likes in WeChat Moments take advantage of this principle, so users like to upload content and then constantly check to see if anyone has liked or commented on it. To gain recognition, you can also take advantage of people's natural comparison mentality. WeChat's masturbation and jumping games were once all the rage, and users kept playing them just to rank higher in their circle of friends and compare themselves to others. Show your good side and gain recognition and praise from everyone. In the book "Crazy Story", this kind of game comparison is named "Leverage Principle", that is, through ranking in social circles, achievements are displayed and people's feelings about achievements are amplified, thereby making everyone addicted.

Overcome the challenge: The people who climb Mount Everest will be particularly excited because they have overcome the challenge the moment they climb Mount Everest; the marathon runners will feel particularly excited because they have overcome the challenge the moment they break through the finish line. Game players will be particularly excited when the game progress bar reaches 100% because they have overcome the challenge... Overcoming the challenge will bring joy and satisfaction. How should product managers use the principle of overcoming challenges to create addiction? product? A key method is to break down the goal and create different milestone moments to keep users excited again and again. Imagine that players of a game have gone through a long period of time, directly rising from level one to level 100, without the milestone moments of level two, level three, and level four in between. Then most players will definitely not stick to it until the end. Now that games can use this kind of milestone feedback to meet player needs, other products can do the same. For example, in online education products, the progress bar will go up before completing a course. After completing dozens of courses, a badge will be given and a title will be assigned to the user. This uses the principle of overcoming challenges in the moment of glory to encourage users to continue using it. product.

Show courage: When people complete something they dare not do, they will be particularly excited and happy. This principle is very similar to the principle of gaining recognition. Product managers can use the function of sharing product screenshots to satisfy people's courage to show off. For example, in the circle of friends, you can often see screenshots of fitness software shared by a friend after running many kilometers. The sharer is showing off his courage. This principle can also be used to achieve viral marketing effects.

2.3.4 Moment of connection

Moment of connection is to create connections between people and use the emotions between people to deepen users’ impression of the product. Product managers can design moments of connection by creating a sense of shared purpose, deepening emotions between users, and remembering precious moments in history.

A sense of shared mission: To design a sense of shared mission, product managers can gather product users into a team and then give the team a goal to inspire users’ sense of shared mission. . For example, in a 25-player team battle in World of Warcraft, everyone's shared mission is to defeat the BOSS; in a club in the Cycling APP, everyone's shared mission is to push the club's ranking to the top.

Deepen feelings: If a product can deepen the feelings between users and other people, it can also have a certain effect on increasing user stickiness. For example, Alipay’s family account can deepen the relationship between users and their families.

Precious moments: If a product can evoke good memories for users, it will also deepen the users’ good impression of the product. For example, the "My Story" module in Baidu Cloud strings together historical photos to evoke people's good memories and display their precious memories.

2.4 How to create a “just-almost” product

“Just-almost” means that the product creates a situation where users are just a little bit close to achieving their goals, making users reluctant to give up. Want to try again. "Just a little bit" has been widely used nowadays, and the principle is easy to understand, but how does a product manager create an atmosphere of "just a little bit"? You can use the method of post-difficulty to continuously create an atmosphere of "just a little bit close" to users.

Post-difficulty: Put the difficulty of the product at the back. As the user becomes accustomed to the product and improves the operating level, the difficulty of the product will be continuously increased, so that the user always has a "just a little bit" feeling. The feeling that the goal can be achieved makes users addicted to the product. This principle has been fully used in the game. In all games, it is very easy to upgrade at the beginning, and the further you upgrade, the more difficult it becomes; the WeChat Jump game is particularly easy at the beginning, and the further you go, the smaller the box becomes, and the higher the difficulty. The product managers of game manufacturers all invariably make the settings very simple at first to make it easy for users to get started, and then it becomes more and more difficult, so that users become addicted because of "just a little bit". Internet product managers can also solve this problem. For example, the bargaining function of Pinduoduo mentioned above is a particularly good case of post-difficulty setting. Similarly, if you want to design a lottery like a slot machine, you can set it up to create a sense of tension at the beginning, and create a sense of tension at the end. The unfinished feeling of "I'm just close to winning".

Shorten the time it takes for users to get stimulation: When the subway is about to arrive at the station, there is a high probability that users will not open the mobile video software to choose a new movie to watch, and there is a high probability that they will not open Honor of Kings to play Last game: When a user finishes a game of chicken game and finds that there are still 5 minutes of fragmented time, the user will hardly choose to play another game. When users give up opening a product or giving up using a product, a very important reason is lack of time. Product managers can shorten the length of individual content of the product, replace long videos with short videos, replace lengthy articles with short information, and replace large games with small games. On the one hand, such a design can occupy users' fragmented time and effectively prevent users from giving up using it due to lack of time. Products, on the other hand, will also cause users to have an inner narration of "do it again, it won't take up much time" after using the product. The continuous cyclic appearance of this inner narration makes it difficult for users to stop actively and makes users addicted.

2.5 How to create a “might be good” product

Random rewards: The random reward method is similar to the euphoric moment in this article’s How to Create a “Feel Good” Product, and the random rewards are in "Addicted" It is also called "variable rewards" in a book, that is, using unpredictable rewards to maintain users' expectations for the product and give users the feeling that "it may be good".

Show beauty: Clothing sellers on Taobao will hire some beautiful models to take photos of clothes, so that users can have an association of "it might look good on me" about the clothes they are browsing. Showing beauty is to show the good side of the product to users, so that users can have a good association with the product. A classic case of displaying beauty is Airbnb, a homestay short-term rental platform, hiring professional photographers to enhance guest users’ recognition of homestay rooms and increase order volume.

When Airbnb first launched the product, its user growth rate was almost zero. The founding team carefully analyzed the reasons and found that since the photos of the B&B taken by the B&B owner could not truly show the beauty of the room, users were reluctant to place orders. Subsequently, Airbnb hired We hired a professional photography team to personally visit all landlords' guest rooms in New York to take high-level photos and package them, which resulted in a huge increase in orders from New York. It can be seen that Airbnb uses the method of showing good things to make users think "it might be good".

2.6 Other references for creating addictive products

Maintain user excitement: Like the Douyin design method described in this article, Douyin uses a gentle slide to switch videos. This way, the user's excitement value is always kept at the highest point, so that the user has no time to have the idea of ​​"leaving", causing the user to linger on the product. The key point of using this principle is to make the product operation extremely simple, maintain the user's excitement value at all times, and prevent the user's excitement value from declining. Regarding the minimalist design method of the product, the author will share it in the subsequent product design, so stay tuned.

Summary: Create a “toolbox” of addictive products