Have you ever thought, what makes us use products or services, to buy things, to download apps, to interact with websites? What is the reason for technology interactions and recommendations to others about what we like and think is useful? What’s the deal? We could look at several ideas from psychology to understand what motivates us to do the things we do.
Sometimes we are externally forced to use certain applications in order to achieve our goal and it is an example of extrinsic motivation. On the other hand, if we don’t have to perform certain actions and are doing it by our own will, then it is considered an intrinsic motivation. According to Paul Sherman’s “Motivation Presentation”, intrinsic motivation is crucial for effective design. The designers need to understand its main concepts that include:
- AIDA
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
- Value Proposition
- Calls-to-Action
- Friction
- Time to Value
Following Norman’s concepts of the gulfs, we can motivate a person to engage in certain behavior. The Gulf of Evaluation and the Gulf of Execution are the degree of ease where the user can understand the state of the system and able to perceive, achieve their goal, and interpret whether performed action was successful. In addition, the visceral, behavioral, and reflective levels of brain processing related to both cognitive and emotional processing. Both visceral and behavioral responses taking place on a subconscious level without the use of analysis or conscious control. However, the reflective level occurs on a conscious level where the reasoning takes place. All three of them work together and result in either good or bad user experience outcomes.
It is also important to consider if “the seven stages of action” and “the seven fundamental design principles” defined by Don Norman:
- Discoverability
- Feedback
- Conceptual Model
- Affordances
- Signifiers
- Mappings
- Constraints
have been faithfully understood applied to the product design. In addition, designers need to recognize that people behave or act in a certain manner depending on their “knowledge in the head and in the world.” The knowledge in the head is formed by short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). Whereas, STM is a memory of the present and can retain a limited amount of information or most recent experiences automatically without any effort. On the other hand, LTM is a memory of the past and it takes time and effort for information to get into and get out of long-term memory.
References:
Norman, D.A. (2013). The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. New York: Basic Books.
Johnson, J. (2014). Designing with the mind in mind, second edition: Simple guide to understanding user interface design guidelines. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Anderson, S.A. (2011). Seductive interaction design: Creating playful, fun, and effective user experiences. New York: New Riders.
Sherman, P. Motivation Slides and Transcript.pdf (1.243 MB)