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When you create an app, a website, or a game, how do you attract
users, and perhaps more importantly, how do you keep them? Irresistible Apps explains
exactly how to do this using a library of 27 motivational design patterns and real-world
examples of how they work.

As
a developer, you need to retain users in the new economy of advertisements, subscriptions,
and in-app purchases, but how do you do this? How do some applications keep
users coming back? Why do people spend hours and hours playing World of
Warcraft? Why do people care about Reddit karma? What makes customers keep buying
from Amazon? Why do so many people love Khan Academy?

The
answers are found in Gameful, Social, Interface, and Information patterns. Not
only will you learn about these patterns, you´ll also learn why they work using psychological theories
of intrinsic motivation, behavioral psychology, and behavioral economics. Good
and bad implementations of the patterns are shown so practitioners can use them
effectively and avoid pitfalls along the way.

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Introduction to Motivational Design
Psychology of Motivation
Understanding Patterns
Gameful Patterns
Social Patterns
Interface Patterns
Information Patterns
Understanding Motivational Dark Patterns
Temporal Dark Patterns
Monetary Dark Patterns
Social Capital Dark Patterns
Patterns as Analysis
Patterns as Design Tools
The End Is the Beginning
Bibliography

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Chris Lewis is a software engineer based in Silicon Valley, and in a past life he worked as a database consultant. He holds a Computer Science PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he researched both software engineering and game design, marrying the two in his study of motivational design patterns. He is co-founder of the Games and Software Engineering academic workshop.

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