New Here?
Read these recommended essays
Past Articles from NirandFar.com
Invisible
Designing Customer Habits
- The Science of Habit-Forming Products
- How Two Companies Hooked Customers On Products They Rarely Use
- How to Win Your Competition’s Customers
- Hooked for Good: How Habit-Forming Products Improve Lives
- 4 Ways to Win Your Competitor’s Customer Habits (Slides)
- The Limits of Loyalty: When Habits Change, You’re Toast
- 4 Ways to Use Psychology to Win Your Competition’s Customers
- The Real Reason “Stupid” Startups Raise So Much Money
- The Psychology Behind Why We Can’t Stop Messaging
- The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why is Slack so Habit-Forming?
- Framing Reward is as Important as Reward Itself
- Why I Wrote “Hooked”
- The Sweet Spot: Where Technology Meets the Motivational Brain
- The Link Between Habits and User Satisfaction
- How To Build Habits In A Multi-Device World
- Why Do Fads Fade? The Inevitable Death Of Flappy Bird
- You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users
- How You Can Help Users Change Habits
- Hunting for Habits: Keying in on smart design to make a product irresistible
- Why Behavior Change Apps Fail to Change Behavior
- Think You Like What You Like? Think Again
- Why Business is Addicted to Habits
- New Video – “Hooked: Building Habit-Forming Products”
- Video: The Hook Model in 15 Minutes
- Getting Your Product Into the Habit Zone
- Infinite Scroll: The Web’s Slot Machine
- Designing User Habits Video
- Psychology of Sports: How Sports Infect Your Brain
- Behavior by Design Video
- Stop Building Apps, Start Building User Behaviors
- The First Thing to Know When Creating a Habit
- Hooking Users In 3 Steps: An Intro to Habit Testing
- Variable Rewards: Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy
- Hooks: An Intro on How to Manufacture Desire
- User Habits: Why Startups Must Be Behavior Experts
- Behavior by Design
Changing Your Habits
- The Strange Way Being “Good” Hurts Your Willpower
- Why Our Tech Obsession Might Be a Work Obsession
- Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked: Here’s How to Stay Sharp
- How to Achieve Your Goals By Creating an Enemy
- The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You
- Would You Take A Bet That Would Change Your Life? Probably Not. Here’s Why
- The Behavioral Economics Diet: The Science of Killing a Bad Habit
- The Mind-Hack I Used to Help My Father Lose Weight
- Can’t Kick a Bad Habit? You’re Probably Doing It Wrong
- Your Fitness App is Making You Fat, Here’s Why
- This Simple Equation Reveals How Habits Shape Your Health, Happiness, and Wealth
- The Number One Reason Good Habits Don’t Last
- How to Design Behavior (The Behavior Change Matrix)
- Forming New Habits: Train to be an Amateur, Not an Expert
- Why Your Goals Will Fail, and What You Can Do About It
- What A-Players Do That You Don’t
Upgrading Yourself
- When Distraction is a Good Thing
- The Strange Way Being “Good” Hurts Your Willpower
- Research Reveals How to Take a Better Break
- How to Achieve Your Goals By Creating an Enemy
- How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind
- What Do You Do When Someone “Steals” Your Amazing Idea?
- The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You
- This Weird Research-Backed Goal Setting Hack Actually Works
- Don’t Let Friendships Starve to Death: Use This Happiness Hack to Keep People Close
- Conquer Distractions With This Simple Chart
- Three Steps To Get Up To Speed On Any Subject Quickly
- It’s How You React to Failure that Matters: Why Ego is the Enemy
- Happiness Hack: This One Ritual Made Me Much Happier
- 3 Ways to Make Better Decisions Using “The Power of Noticing”
- Getting Over Your Fear of Missing Out
- 3 Ways I Use Technology to Find Happiness
- Why Positive Thinking is Bad For You
Building Better Products
- Your World is Full of Placebo Buttons (and That’s a Good Thing)
- 3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products
- Good Products Start With Good Questions
- How Technology Tricks You Into Tipping More
- How Successful Companies Design for Users’ Multi-Device Lives
- Nostalgia: A Product Designer’s Secret Weapon
- “Yes, And”: The Two Words that Created a #1 App
- How to Boost Desire Using the Psychology of Scarcity
- Today’s Behaviors, Tomorrow’s Startups
- The Future is Driven by Interface Changes
- What You Don’t Know About Human Intuition Can Hurt You
- How Technology is Like Bug Sex
- Mass Persuasion, One User At A Time
- This is Your Brain On Boarding: How to Turn Visitors Into Users
- The Next Secrets of the Internet
- Go Ask Grandma: How To Design For “Normals”
- What Is, and Is Not, Your Product’s Job
Increasing Engagement
Triggers That Move People
Getting Users to Invest
Using Bots and the Conversational User Interface
Putting Technology In Its Place
- When Distraction is a Good Thing
- Technology is Distracting and Addictive. Here’s How to Fix It. (Video)
- Why Our Tech Obsession Might Be a Work Obsession
- Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked: Here’s How to Stay Sharp
- How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind
- The Four People Addicting You to Technology
- Why People Check Their Tech at the Wrong Times (and the Simple Trick to Stop It)
- Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology?
- How to Clear Your Computer of Focus-Draining Distraction
- Un-Hooked: Increasing Focus in the Age of Distraction
- Latest Tech Trends: Products to Eliminate Distractions and Increase Willpower
- Email Habits: How to Use Psychology to Regain Control
- How to Break 5 Soul-Sucking Technology Habits
- 4 Simple Things I Did to Control My Bad Tech Habits
- The Real Reason You’re Addicted to Your Phone
- This Will Be the Last Article You Read
- Time for Digital Hat Racks
- Escape From Message Hell
- Strange Sex Habits of Silicon Valley
Behavior Design in Action
- How to Use Personality Science to Drive Online Conversions
- The Unbelievable Future of Habit-Forming Technology
- The Secret Marketing Power of Evolutionary Psychology
- Don’t Ask People What They Want, Watch What They Do
- How to Start a Career in Behavioral Design
- The Secret Psychology of Snapchat
- Mind Hacking a Book
- Can Online Apps Change Real-Life Behavior?
- The Secrets of Addictive Online Auctions
- Refresh: The App a Secret Agent Would Love
- In 10 Years, We Won’t Use Personal Technology
- From Laid to Paid: How Tinder Set Fire to Online Dating
- Hooking Users One Snapchat at a Time
- Bible App: Getting 100 Million Downloads is More Psychology Than Miracles
- What Killed Turntable.fm?
- When Designing for Good Is Bad
- Spotting the Next Facebook: Why Emotions are Big Business
- Pinterest’s Obvious Secret
How to Start-Up
- 3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products
- What Tech Companies Can Learn from Rehab
- Using Mind Control to Raise Startup Cash
- Angel or Devil: Who’s Really Investing In Your Start-Up?
- How To Save Your Startup From The “Spotlight Effect”
- Why Everyone Hates I.T. People
- The Developer Divide: When Great Companies Can’t Hire
- Being a Quitter Makes You a Good Entrepreneur
- Why You Should Run Your Business Barefoot
- Are you a Startup Star, Wacko, or Wannabe?
Business Lessons
- What Do You Do When Someone “Steals” Your Amazing Idea?
- “Think Different” is Bad Advice
- People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.
- Here’s Why You’ll Hate the Apple Watch (and the Important Business Lesson You Need to Know)
- Habits, Obstacles, and Media Manipulation with Ryan Holiday
- It’s Not All Fun And Games: The Pros and Cons of Gamification at Work
- Getting Traction: How to Hook New Users
- Teach or Hook? What’s the Real Goal of Online Education?
- How To Cope with Your Insane Jealousy Of The WhatsApp Deal
- Is “Lean Startup” Right for Your Idea?
- The Power of No
- To Become a Superstar, Improve Your Strengths (Not Your Faults)
- Marketplaces & The Curse of the Network Effect
- Venture Capital and The Superstitious Investor
- Making a Marketplace
- Ways To Get People To Do Things They Don’t Want To Do
- The Network Effect Isn’t Good Enough
- Abolish The Reference Check
Designing Ethically
- Tech Companies are Addicting People! But Should They Stop?
- Technology is Distracting and Addictive. Here’s How to Fix It. (Video)
- Here’s How to Ethically Manipulate Other People
- Should We Worry About the World Becoming More Addictive? Q&A with Nir Eyal
- The Sneaky Trick Behind the Explosive Growth of the Kardashian Game
- Is Some Tech Too Addictive?
- What if In-App Purchases Came to Real Life?
- Our More Addictive World
- Viral Loops Or Viral ‘Oops’?
- The Morality of Manipulation
Other Resources
Presentation slides: See presentations I've given to organizations and companies on my Slideshare page here.
Videos: I post recorded presentations I've given to my YouTube channel here.
Podcast: Every Monday I publish a new podcast episode. Make sure to subscribe!
Recommended books: A list of books I recommend can be found on my Amazon page.

