The Cigarette Test

Can your product be used 23 times a day?

• Create an engaging enough content loop that your users won’t ever want to put your product down

Larry page once said something that others have redistributed: “Is this something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?” An idea that stands out in my mind daily when trying to build products.

A simple yet powerful analogy in its own right, I don’t think its pushing the logical conclusion far enough. So that being said, I would like to introduce the next step in this “TEST”.

The Cigarette Test:

Is your product addictive enough to use 23 times a day? Some products that come to mind when I think of this:

• TikTok
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram

Apps and products that’s goal is to take a two hour chunk from your existence, they sustain you with just enough engagement to get you coming back. Something like WeChat might also fall into this, but I don’t have enough experience with that to say for sure.

Either way this is a good rule of thumb to try to build an engaging, (maybe addictive) experience for users.

-Till the next time, GP