Motivation has been described as the “energisation and direction of human behaviour” (Reeve, 2005). A fundamental concept in the understanding, regulation and support of human behaviour, Motivation has been debated and discussed for time immemorial. From Confucian and Sanskrit philosophy in the East to that of the Greek political philosophers and Christian biblical scholars in the West: The symbiotic relationship of the individual and their environment and attempts to understand the governing principles of this relationship have been one of the most central questions to ‘energise and direct’ humanity’s thoughts, beliefs and creativity. Defining not only the social structures of the societies in which we live but the political, educational and creative philosophies that govern and sustain them.

Mook (1987) provides a fuller account of the historical evolution of Motivation and in turn the recursive nature of Motivation within society. History builds a case for how significantly a society or community’s conception of ‘motivation’ underpins its philosophical and political stance and behaviour. For example Pre-Enlightenment era Europe was governed by the Christian church and thus the values of the church transcended national boundary, in much the same way that for example modern day Islam and Judaism often transcends or paradoxically in the case of countries such as Iran and Israel respectively, epitomises national or political identity.

There is little escaping the fact that our motivations or how we explain and conceptualise them digs deeper into our own psyche and that of our societies than very often as designers we are prepared or entitled to look. Furthermore, if Design Thinking and Service Design hold the key to solving larger more complex social problems as (Burns, Cottam, Vanstone, & Winhall, 2006), Brown (2009), Martin (2009), Loevlie (2009) and Miller and Rudnick (2009) have claimed, do we need to start being more capable and comfortable at asking those questions and visualising and conceptualising the responses?

This chapter seeks to explore as succinctly as 8000 characters allows what modern day psychology and its literature can contribute to overcoming these sometimes uncomfortable ethical, political and social conceptualisations and how, in addition to existing and established Service Design tools and processes,  it might be able to support us ‘design thinkers’ as we seek to ‘energise and direct’ human behaviour through the design and creation of innovative products, systems and services.

Thank you all in anticipation of your help and really looking forward to hearing from you, either via Twitter or via the comments form below:

Other Relevant Posts...

• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• October 28th, 2009 -- User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals… (1)
• October 4th, 2009 -- Designing Design Research and Generating Momentum (1)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• September 26th, 2009 -- Museums, User Empowerment and Defining Service Value (0)
• September 24th, 2009 -- Cybernetics, Public Engagement and Participatory Design (8)

This is a fairly comprehensive presentation of the underlying philosophy and research behind my masters work in helping designers visualise and support motivation in the design of everyday products and services. I’ve obviously talked about the development of this work extensively on this blog so I’d like to take the chance to thank all of you who have visited and contributed comments and support – its helped me refine and adapt my ideas thus far and I really appreciate it!

I’m hoping to add an audio summary of the presentation at some point, but otherwise the presentation gives an overview of the foundations of my framework of motivation in design, the research behind it and then a few examples of products and services that have either been directed by this conceptualisation or whose success as ‘motivational platforms’ can be interpreted by using the framework.

People may also recognise a few of the case studies from the Nordic Service Design Conference – thanks to the presenters their for their explanations, this presentation also served as an opportunity for me to pass on what I’d learned and enjoyed from that conference to my colleagues at the HCDI at Brunel.

As ever comments and questions are gratefully appreciated and if you are interested in finding our more or understanding how this framework can be applied to your own design or service propositions then please get in touch.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy!

Other Relevant Posts...

• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• July 10th, 2009 -- Language Matters – is ‘design thinking’ dead? (1)
• June 18th, 2009 -- Is Design a Skilled or Procedural Process? Or Both? (1)
• February 15th, 2010 -- A Big Day for British Youth and Winter Sports – An Inspiration For The Rest of Us? (2)
• January 14th, 2010 -- Interview with Dan Pink on Motivation (0)

My research into Human Motivation and its relationship with design has seen me exploring a lot of organismic theories of human behaviour, those are the theories that suggest we are naturally predisposed or energised to grow or seek new challenges, affiliation or environments in order to remain healthy, happy and fulfilled.

Obviously not everyone is in agreement on the underlying mechanisms of human motivation and behaviour, there are many models, but these are issues that we as designers revisit often in the form of the well intentioned but hideously over-cited and rarely understood Maslow’s Hierarchy is based on such a humanist/organismic perspective.

My own research is exploring a newer an more updated model of which I attach an early draft below, one that also represents the iterative and dynamic nature of human behaviour – something that is overlooked in Maslow’s version.

My model and the research that underpins it (predominantly Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory) indicates that in order to remain psychologically fulfilled we need to balance three psychological needs for AUTONOMY (Self Reflection, Independence, Empowerment), RELATEDNESS (Socialisation, Care and Concern for and from others), COMPETENCE (Feelings of efficacy, self control and accomplishment).

Deci and Ryan’s premise (and mine) is that only by balancing and fulfilling these core psychological needs will we be truely HAPPY and HEALTHY. My model attempts to illustrate how these INTRINSIC (some might say INNATE) psychological needs are often balanced against EXTRINSIC design factors and criteria and just as with Maslow’s Hierarchy if we want as designers to design systems and services that leave us feeling fulfilled they will need to address all of these INNATE HUMAN with EXPLICIT DESIGN capabilities and specifications.

If an intentionally or accidentally designed system cannot SELF REGULATE, or as you say Arne, “balance” EXTRINSIC and INTRINSIC demands it ultimately will become unsustainable.

To help make this idea more explicit I will elaborate – much of industrial design is focussed on the SENSORY features of products, services and systems, whilst interaction design and ‘soft design disciplines’ are interested in COGNITIVE levels of interaction. Recently of course, as most of us here will be aware Design has begun to shift towards more ORGANISATIONAL or ‘Service’ perspectives in an attempt to satisfy the ‘NEEDS’ of its users and customers. Or perhaps if I put it more cynically – in an attempt to continue to generate value for stakeholders in the design process. This shift in the focus of design, as is well documented, has occurred as a result of technology that initially enable ‘interfaces’ and more recently high levels of social connectivity and networking.

With my model, I hope to help move design one step closer to exactly the call you’ve made here Arne, by helping designers to understand how their expertise in manipulation of SENSORY, COGNITIVE and ORGANISATIONAL affordances and data can be better focussed on meeting users genuine SOCIAL, COMPETENCE and AUTONOMY needs and in turn designing systems that are by consequence self motivating, sustaining and perhaps as you allude here ‘caring’.

What does everyone think?

Other Relevant Posts...

• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• December 9th, 2009 -- Modelling Motivation in the Design of Products, Systems and Services (0)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• February 15th, 2010 -- A Big Day for British Youth and Winter Sports – An Inspiration For The Rest of Us? (2)
• January 14th, 2010 -- Interview with Dan Pink on Motivation (0)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (9)

In his comments he wrapped up a lot of the wider tensions within the Service Design community about the relationship between academia and practice that I know are hot topics of discussion at London events such as Service Design drinks and Service Design thinks at the moment, as well as clearly the Service Design Network Conference held this week.

Indeed, a lot of the background to this post and my own work is fuelled by an urge to bridge some of this tension – between theory and practice as Andy put it –  this is synthesis in the truest sense of the word.

For anyone interested further background to these issues can be found here and here.

If I created a strawman yesterday in my discussion of what was said at the Service Design Conference then I apologise. I suppose the essence of what I was attempting to highlight was that despite any personal philosophical or pragmatic differences of opinion that might exist within the community, there appears to be two prevalent ways in which designers classify users. One is to see users as reactive i.e. responsive to extrinsic constraints and the other is to see them as proactive i.e. energised by internal ideas and ambitions (goal oriented).

The reality seems to be that we as humans fluctuate between these states probably faster than we’ll ever be able to measure or generalise accurately (its not going to stop me trying ) and thus we as Service Designers rely on the ethnographic approaches Andy mentions or laboratory based scientific experiments that are well documented in scientific journals to attempt to understand behaviour.

Whether designers are fully concious of the fact that they are making these judgements about users is another issue open to debate and discussion. Indeed, the oft cited definition of Design Research is “to make explicit what is otherwise implicit in the everyday practice of design.” Thus by raising this discussion, I was simply attempting to raise this question within the minds of us designers about how we implicitly view the user we are designing for? As I mention above the answer appears to be as either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ depending on circumstance, context or which particular part of the design or use phase we might be referring to.

Education systems are interesting service examples themselves in how they attempt to balance between encouraging creativity and intrinsically motivated behaviour whilst also controlling these processes with structured curriculum and routines. Indeed, any service we can think of will attempt to strike a balance between generating and controlling value (or creativity, or energy, or money) for all the stakeholders involved.

As Andy clarified in his comment on the last post, Birgit Mager was talking at the Service Design Network Conference about users behaviour being a function of Attitude and The Environment. On further research this would appear to also share perspective with that of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1988) which is also based on Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).

This classifies user behaviour as a product of:

• Attitude (Autonomy)
• Social Pressure (Relatedness)
• Perceived Behavioural Control (Competence)

What I’m interested in as part of my masters is how we can design systems and services that enhance user perception of these three inherent human psychological capabilities. Doing so successfully or even unsuccessfully will result in behavioural change, but doing so successfully and encouraging users to reflect on these capabilities will result in sustainable behavioural change (at least that’s the theory).

I’m incredibly fortunate that through this platform and as a result of contributions such as Andy’s I can also modify my own attitude and perceived competence as a result of being able to relate my work to you all.

Andy is right though we need to do more to work together and bridge the gaps between academia and professional practice. I don’t plan to stay in academia forever but whilst I’m still here I’d be interested to hear from you all… do you have any questions about Motivation? Is there something that you as a practitioner are working on and feel like you could use a bit of academic insight or research on? Please get in touch here, via twitter or through the comments link below.

Other Relevant Posts...

• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• October 28th, 2009 -- User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals… (1)
• September 13th, 2009 -- The Philosophy of Service Design (2)
• December 9th, 2009 -- Modelling Motivation in the Design of Products, Systems and Services (0)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• October 4th, 2009 -- Designing Design Research and Generating Momentum (1)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (9)

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 (0)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• 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 (1)
• September 27th, 2009 -- What Are User Needs? (3)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (9)
• 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)