Library
Books, films, and orgs
Nir Eyal's Hooked lays out the four-step trigger-action-reward-investment loop product teams use to build habits — DarkBadge treats it as a map of the mechanisms it scores. That's one of the works below; the rest name and shape the same field.
Featured
Hooked
Nir Eyal · 2014
Nir Eyal's blueprint for building habit-forming products, structured around a four-step "Hook Model": trigger, action, variable reward, investment. Written as a how-to for product teams — DarkBadge treats it as a map of the mechanisms it scores.
How this relates to DarkBadge →
Why this matters
Hooked is the playbook: a four-step formula for building products people can't put down. The NPR piece traces that formula back further, to the slot machine design it borrowed from. Everything else here either names one of these tactics in more detail or backs it with research.
The specific tactics designers use to keep you engaged — and the counterstrategies for pushing back on each one.
Books
Hooked
Nir Eyal · 2014
Nir Eyal's blueprint for building habit-forming products, structured around a four-step "Hook Model": trigger, action, variable reward, investment. Written as a how-to for product teams — DarkBadge treats it as a map of the mechanisms it scores.
How this relates to DarkBadge →
Irresistible
Adam Alter · 2017
Adam Alter on the rise of behavioural addiction and the design patterns that drive it — infinite scroll, variable rewards, social feedback loops. Argues these aren't incidental side effects but the deliberate product of A/B-tested engagement engineering.
How this relates to DarkBadge →
