Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset (click for larger version)

In parallel to those personas, I’m also keen to develop a “Conceptual Framework of Motivation” and begin to elaborate the different levels on which motivation might be observed in oneself or in others. As most behavioural psychologists would doubtless testify, recognising one’s behaviour is the first step to modifying it.

There appears to be a bit of divide in the behavioural design community as to whether people need to recognise either their existing or desired behaviour in order to change it. Some designers and academics arguing that it may be more effective to change behaviour through design without the user having to be aware of it. I had an animated conversation about this over a beer with Frankie Roberto and Dan Lockton. Like I say this is contentious area, but I’m at this stage putting myself fairly firmly in the camp that believe that if behavioural change is to be sustainable, users have to be aware and undertake deliberate and conscious modification of it. Whilst there are doubtless good arguments for the designer as behavioural ‘god’, and I’m more than happy to hear them and discuss them if you wish to share. I find those arguments somewhat belittling of the people that they aim to ‘help’, the typical line in such circumstances being: “that users aren’t always capable of recognising or understanding their ‘needs’ or ‘capabilities’ “. There was a nice quote via Cassie Robinson on this today:

“Accept me as I am & you’ll make me worse. Treat me as what I’m capable of becoming & you’ll help me to become her”

That is not to say that designer’s should shirk all the responsibility onto the user, indeed with reference to the above it perhaps becomes the designer’s responsibility to help that self-reflective process and aid the user in realising their capabilities. The motivational state should be a shared and negotiated agreement between designer, artefact and user, not a diktat by any of those parties. This also means that the designer has an active role and isn’t just subservient to user demands or “lack of vision or creativity“.

Irrespective of this argument and whether user, designer, user-designer or any other stakeholder in the process you will still need to be able to identify, model and measure motivation or any other form of human behaviour for that matter, if you want to change it. I see my motivational personas as aiding identification, whereas I see the attached model, what I’m calling a Motivational Framework as the next step towards being able to model or synthesise motivated behaviour within the wider context of the product or service lifecycle. This understanding is perhaps fundamental to the process of increasing motivational awareness, capability and thereafter designing to empower users in their motivational capabilities.

I would really welcome any feedback you might have on this, particularly in relation to how this might fit into or overlap with your existing creative practice or world view – and I would especially like to hear from you if it seems incompatible with your own views or established methodology.

Other Relevant Posts...

• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (1)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (2)
• December 9th, 2009 -- Modelling Motivation in the Design of Products, Systems and Services (0)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (2)
• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (11)
• July 4th, 2009 -- Fabricant Should Be Aware – Persuasion Requires More Belief and Less Judgement (0)
• February 15th, 2010 -- A Big Day for British Youth and Winter Sports – An Inspiration For The Rest of Us? (2)

Fabricant closes his discussion on the ethics of Persuasive Design and User Centred Design with the following statement:

“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”

The article serves as a discussion of how some of the currently employed or mooted Persuasive Design techniques might be considered by users to be “contrived or manipulating”. If I’m being honest, there’s not much more contrived or manipulative than his closing statement in the article, I’ll repeat it again:

“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”

Hardly a statement likely to breed trust confidence or satisfaction in the design profession by their clients and consumers. Coming a few day’s after I’d read this article by Kicker’s Jen Bove summarising this presentation which also addressed the issue of ‘user needs’. I’ve been struck by the conflicting views of designers in their assessment of user needs and the best ways to repond to them.

There appear to be those designers who view their users as helpless ‘pinballs‘ (thanks Dan!) or those who have belief and trust in their users and wait for it…might even be prepared to involve and empower them in the design process. To clarify it seems Fabricant is positioning himself as only willing to engage with users if as a design professional he maintains a superiority or controlling influence. Whilst Bove in her talk seems more content by empowering her users through co-design and collaboration and admits rightly that as a designer she “has more questions than answers”.

I discussed some of these same ideas in my last post here about user’s expectancy for success – as my current research into designing motivationally engaging experiences demonstrates – the first step to engaging with your users is by making them aware of whatever new technology you want them to use. Thus, in a Motivational Design approach encouraging Awareness is the first responsibility of a designer. Making this new pattern of behaviour or technology relevant involves understanding not what user’s need, but rather how they learn and adapt to new situations and circumstances – their skill acquisition process. As a designer it is fundamental that you believe that your users are capable of and you empower them for behavioural change otherwise you, the designer and facilitator of their new behaviour or experience, are damned from the start by damning them.

The challenge as I see it for designers is being content to play a secondary supportive or coaching role in the process of persuasive design “Encouragement” as Albert Bandura might refer to it. Too often it seems that designers are more intent on pushing their own “genius of insight or perception” or the latest “cool technology” as opposed to truely recognising and supporting what users need or the best way to engage with them.

Industrial Design may have evolved from a Bauhaus ideology of making things aesthetically pleasing so that users felt inclined to purchase them over less attractive products and I concede it may have done so with some success, evolving to the point where designers are polished and capable enough to address more than simply a user’s perceived aesthetic need but also more recently their percieved emotional and social needs as well.

This as I discuss towards the end of this previous post has lead to a sitution where designers are declaring as Fabricant does in his Core 77 article this week:

What if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences?

From where I’m standing it’s actually designer’s messy mix of desires, influences and egos that are the problem. Through the work on my Masters on Motivational Design and Public Engagement I plan to share with you an alternate approach to Persuasive Design, one that believes in supporting a user’s confidence and skill acquisition process, not diminishing it.

Other Relevant Posts...

• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (1)
• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• February 15th, 2010 -- A Big Day for British Youth and Winter Sports – An Inspiration For The Rest of Us? (2)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (2)
• January 14th, 2010 -- Interview with Dan Pink on Motivation (0)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (11)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• December 9th, 2009 -- Modelling Motivation in the Design of Products, Systems and Services (0)