How to design for motivation?

What is motivation?

Motivation is an internal desire to change. It drives human behaviors towards certain goals. When we are motivated, we want, seek and take action.

Digital products and websites want users to act. Companies use motivation design to make that happen. What motivates you to buy on Amazon? What motivates you to constantly go back to Instagram? What motivates you to land on Netflix every day after work?

Two types of motives

There are two types of motives: extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic motives come from the external world. It can be a punishment that forces you to do something because you have to. It can also come with autonomy, driven by your values or goals. For example, you want to keep track of your heart rate to stay healthy.

Many extrinsic motives are rooted in our hunter-gatherer brains, such as a desire for owning physical objects, craving for praises and recognitions from social interactions. That explains why we shop sales, why we compare followers and likes on social media, etc., which means extrinsic motives used in a profit-driven way can cause anxiety and dissatisfaction.

Intrinsic motives come from the self. We all want something fun and interesting. It might differ from person to person. Examples include reading a book, listening to music, learning a skill, etc. Intrinsic motives help businesses form a long-lasting relationship with their users.

Motivation design in the digital space

Accept it or not, we are moving our lives and wellbeing into the digital space. So far there has been good and bad.

It’s a lot more efficient. We can talk to people from the other side of the world. Yadda yadda yadda.

I love talking about the bad. As long as a business wants to encourage certain actions, they pay designers for such goals. Designers then use their toolbox to design motivation to change user behaviors. A product that is good for human well-being can use motivation design to help us become better, and live the life we want. A product that is designed to trade our attention for money can use our motivation in a bad way and cause anxiety and depression. The best worst example is how people are addicted to social media.

We need to regulate the god power of technology with god morals, not monkey brains.

The ideal motivation design

The motivation cycle goes like this:

Step 1: You encountered an extrinsic motive or intrinsic motive.

Step 2: Your dopamine system activates.

Step 3: You want something.

Step 4: You make an effort for it, you seek.

Step 5: You are driven. You move.

Here we will need some techniques to keep the momentum going. The techniques we designers can help the user to achieve a constant behavior change include:

Help people break their big goals into smaller specific goals

People run faster when the finish line is in sight. Small specific goals help people move.

How to use it for good? Using an e-learning platform as an example, break it down into chapters towards the goal of learning Spanish.

Show progress and control

Always give the user a sense of control, let them see the progress — what they have achieved. So that they want to keep going. Using the same e-learning platform example, show the user their last learning progress bar the first thing when they log in.

Use rewards to keep people coming back

We can learn from the best worst example — social media — how to design these rewards, and we are going to use the fitness app to illustrate how to use it right.

I. Give rewards on a variable ratio schedule

• Social media notifications are rewards to our brain. Thanks to our friends, and the system itself, notifications come to us randomly throughout the day, that’s called a variable ratio. Our brain loves this type of reward the most as compared to when rewards come at a fixed time every day.
• How to do it right? For a fitness app, don’t give the user a badge every 3 days. Do 1 day, 3 days, 10 days, 30 days, etc.

II. Make the rewards unpredictable

• Some notifications are neutral such as news. Some are positive when friends liked our posts. Some are negative when someone dropped a mean comment. The excitement of not knowing what to expect keeps us wanting to check the latest notifications.
• How to do it right? For a fitness app, don’t always use an illustrated graphic badge. Maybe it can sometimes be a coupon, an invitation to an exclusive fitness group, unlocking premium content, etc.

III. Give different sized rewards

• Again social media’s rewards’ sizes vary all the time — how many likes I just got, how many new followers, etc.
• How to do it right? Again with the fitness app, maybe it’s a 5 dollar coupon after a 15 days streak, or a 20 dollar coupon after 60 days.

Promote healthy competition

What are you gonna do when you see you are the no.17469 in the world anyways. Research shows that students in a room with 10 people get better scores at SATs compared to the ones in a giant classroom full of people.

Leaderboards for a fitness app? Control the number of people the user can compare themselves to.

Bad use of motivation design & consequences

Besides all the social media motivation overdo mentioned above, there are other patterns we face in everyday life too.

For example, sensationalized clickbaits are the same as a one-sentence notification on your locked screen. They are using bits of info to trigger our info-seeking desire. Not to mention, most of the time the content is garbage.

When digital products create high motivation that doesn’t lead to flourishing, there are consequences. The user acts as the business wants. But over time, either people won’t stick or people get anxious and they realize they can’t resist the urge to go back to your product even when it’s causing problems.

How to reduce bad use of motivation design?

Every company has its business goals. Mostly it falls into people buying their product, people forming a long-lasting relationship with the product, and making money. We have to admit that the nature of some businesses is destined to go against our self-actualization to a great extent, such as online shopping.

I. Use motivation design right in businesses that don’t have much to do with self-actualization

This is not so easy especially when businesses lean too much towards profit goals. This requires a long-term vision, humane values, and a willingness to sacrifice profit for the good.

For example, some people watch TV to clear their heads and relax. Giving the user control over autoplay is great for not wasting their time.

In most cases, it’s just don’t overdo it. Social media’s notification customization actually gives the user control over the number of notifications they receive daily. However, by default, they are all set as “on”. You should know that defaults give away what the business actually wants from the user.

II. Use motivation design right in businesses for self-actualization

This is fairly easy because these businesses speak to users’ intrinsic goals or high-autonomy extrinsic motives, such as values, connections, learning skills, becoming the best version of ourselves. But still, don’t overdo it. Your goal is to help the user become better, never “Daily Active Users”.

For example, social proof is a great extrinsic motive. But for a mindfulness app, don’t use a “Share” button when the user just finished checking in with their inner self. The process should be humane. The whole experience should be wrapped in a peaceful way. Not to show anyone else.

Conclusion

In the end, creating meaningful connections should become designers’ primary motive. Only then can we design nourishing relationships between products and people, business and people, and ultimately people and people.