Do you know the value of your phone’s front page? Companies spend billions in advertising to earn these spots. And with good reason. To any smartphone user, the front page serves as a mantle of quality. These apps bring their users back every day. There’s one trait the apps on the front page of your phone have – they’re addicting. If your app wants to stand a chance of winning a spot on your user’s front page, you need to create addictive behaviors by implementing variable rewards. What makes apps addicting? In “Hooked,” Nir Eyal goes over the incentives users have to take desired actions. Incentives are broken into three types of rewards: The Tribe The Hunt The Self Rewards of the tribe pertain to gaining acceptance and approval from others. An example of this is the addictive behavior of Instagram users. The app has done an excellent job creating addictive behaviors in their users. Each time a user posts a photo they will open the app afterwards hoping to see a pop up notification letting them know another user has “liked” their photo. Rewards of the hunt pertain to investing time or money and discovering a desired goal or value. Product Hunt does a spectacular job in getting their users to open their app at least once a day. The app provides a variable reward to their users for finding new apps. Any Product Hunter has found at least one app which has made part of their life easier. However it is not guaranteed they will find a new product that will change their lives every day, but the likelihood of finding a quality app is high enough to create addictive behaviors. Rewards of the self are reliant on the self-motivation of the user to achieve a high level of mastery. I’m an ex-World of Warcraft addict. My account has over 10,000 hours played. I was driven to be the best player on my server. In WoW, there is an arena system where a team of players fight against another team. After each battle you are shown how many points you have won or lost. Every six months the arena season ends. Your rating is locked and the title of “Gladiator” and “Malevolent Gladiator” are rewarded to players ranked in the top .5% and the #1 ranked team, respectively. These titles are the rewards players spend months fighting for. They validate levels of mastery which fuel each user’s rewards of the self. How Testlio Keeps Their Testers. Keeping top testers on Testlio is the key to our success. People might say testers stay on board because we pay them. While I don’t doubt it’s a factor, there are much easier ways for professional testers to make money. Testers must be driven by their rewards of the self. It’s key each tester is motivated to become better. It’s the number one trait we look for when we recruit. If they lack motivation to become better, I can guarantee they will not stick around for longer than a week. Testers are graded after each test cycle. Our best testers strive to improve their tester rating because it serves as a benchmark for themselves. This is the key value of a tester. Testers request to be invited to more projects because they want to be given more opportunities to improve their tester ratings and out do themselves. By nature of the testing process, our testers are being rewarded for hunting for bugs. There is a rush in spending hours tinkering with an app, looking for ways a developer made a mistake and coming across a critical flaw. I’ve seen testers jump in excitement when finding a bug. Our testers only feel this way because they care. A tester’s value of the hunt would not exist if it were not for their self motivation to improve and provide value. Conclusion There are three types of rewards which drive users to return. Rewards of the Tribe Rewards of the Hunt Rewards of the Self Testlio is reliant on finding testers who care about testing. If they are driven by money, it is almost guaranteed they will not see more than one project. We reward users by allowing them to focus on hunting critical bugs, increasing their level of investment which creates excitement upon capture. We then grade their work, which drives them to perform better than they did before. If you can identify which driver your users are influenced by, you can reward your users with simple notifications to serve as a catalyst. However each company may their catalyst to be different, so spend time and create one that makes sense to your product.