As all of us will most likely now be aware the Winter Olympic Games have started in Vancouver Canada. It’s now day four of the games and that means the first day of cross-country skiing events. These events are obviously close to my heart as something of a cross-country ski enthusiast and it is great to know that for the first time in 16 years Great Britain will have representatives in these events. Andrew Musgrave and Andrew Young will be competing in the Mens 15km freestyle event whilst Fiona Hughes will compete in the Ladies 10km. A shout out also to Ireland’s PJ Barron who will be racing as well in this afternoon’s events and trains with the rest of the British team.
Andrew Young and Andrew Musgrave Ahead of the Olympics (photo credit: PJ Barron)
This is a fantastic achievement not just for the three individuals in question but for all the coaching team who have helped get them there over the past ten years, British Nordic Development Squad coaches Roy Young, Anghared Evans, Ekaterina Rachel, Keith Spencer, Marek Pasterny, Pete Gurney, Roger Homyer and Steve Boyd and Al Dargie as well as club coaches at a number of local clubs across the UK such as the Cairngorm Biathlon and Nordic Ski Club and Huntly Nordic Ski Club.
It is also testament to the competitiveness of the rest of the squad that these three individuals have been pushed to this level of performance. It is perhaps overlooked when the Olympics comes around and the focus is on the top three places, just how much work goes into preparing, training, resting and equipping all the athletes in the field, not just to get them to the start line today but every day over the past four years since the last games or longer. There has also been a huge amount of effort and commitment from a significant number of athletes who didn’t make it this year and whom having missed out this time are already planning the next four years to take them to Soichi 2014, not to mention all the British Championships, World Junior Championships, World Cup and World Championship campaigns in the interim.
Indeed, four years ago if you had asked me what my central ambition in life was, it was to be on the start line alongside these guys, I gave it my best shot but its a hundred times harder than those guys out there will make it look today. That is a credit not only to them but their coaches, families and supporters no matter the results today. Indeed, it is so great from a Motivational perspective to see all of them and Andrew Musgrave in particular, in their interviews for the BBC, talk about how these Games are about experience and providing performance benchmarks for future years performance. As anybody who has read up on Motivational Theory or competed in elite level sport will know, successful performance and sustaining motivated behaviour comes as a result of focusing on your own (intrinsic) performance, not simply measuring it based on extrinsic rewards such as medals, money or praise.
Whilst it is these three young skiers that will represent all of us in Great Britain in the races this evening. I believe that what they and all their competitors from all the other nations have achieved and will continue to achieve represents a way of thinking and a behaviour that all of us can benefit from considering:
How we work together in teams or families to achieve our shared objectives – how do we support, share and inspire ourselves and those around to achieve our personal and shared aims, whatever those aims might be.
How we reflect, think and introspect upon our own performance – how does it fit with our personal values and aims and how does it compare with those around us – is our day to day behaviour going to take us where we want to be in four to five years time?
Do we enjoy our day to day experiences and the challenges and pleasures they throw up enough for our long terms aims to be worthwhile? We’re all aware of the phrase “Life’s too short…” How do we manage and regulate our own day to day performances and how we interact with the world around us to ensure we are fulfilling our potential and contributing as much as possible to those around us and our dreams and ambition?
Where do you want to be in four years time? And for the designers and behavioural change professionals amongst us, how do we design products, systems and services that support this level of experience, thought and performance? What else can we learn from the Olympics and Olympians in terms of how to energise and support human motivation and performance?
Good luck to Andrew, Andrew and Fi as well as to all of the rest of us!
As part of the ongoing promotion of his new book Drive, Dan Pink gives an interview discussing some of the underlying theories and principles which he has repackaged as a management book. I’m looking forward to reading the book which comes out here in the UK at the end of this month. Dan is also due to speak at the RSA in a couple of weeks time which again I’m very much looking forward to.
I think this publication is very exciting for those of us involved in motivation research and for forward thinking business managers at whom this book seems to be aimed. Based on both this interview and his Ted talk last year Dan seems to be leveraging, at least conceptually, Hullian Drive Theory which allows him utilise the straightforward metaphor and illustrate the important point that motivation is about energisation of human behaviour. This theory whilst hugely influential in the field of motivation and educational psychology is largely discredited now by the more recent interpretation that it does not fully accomdate explanation of Avoidance behaviour. To put more simply, Drive Theory does not explain risk taking or more intrinsic forms of pleasure seeking behaviour. For a discussion on Approach-Avoidance behaviour and freely downloadable research papers see http://www.psych.rochester.edu/research/apav/.
It’s nice though to see Pink make mention of Autonomy as a component of motivation and a factor which forms a big part of Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory which I have been leveraging heavily in my own work on designing motivation. I feel that their Organismic theory of motivation is far more adaptable and useful as an explanation for motivation than Drive Theory mentioned above. The question of how designers can utilise an organismic theory of motivation is the subject of my recent chapter contributed to the This is Service Design Thinking publication. It’s perhaps apt that Self Determination Theory and Service Design Thinking share the same acronym as they are well placed to conceptualise and design for intrinsic, rather than extrinsic forms of motivation.
It’s nice to see the mention of a sports person as a metaphor for motivated behaviour and I would hope that this reoccurs throughout the book, as someone who has myself become so interested in motivation by approaching it (no pun intended ) from a sports psychology and elite performance background.
Davos 15km - P. Vordenberg - teamtoday.org
I agree ultimately with Pink’s sentiment that people generally need more feedback, annual reviews and even biannual reviews are not going to motivate employees in the best possible way. But I’m a bit confused then as towards the end of the above interview he is so quick to dismiss (or avoid) addressing the work on Anticipated Feedback (Bandura) as a motivator. The original research on this can be found here, but it basically suggests that anticipated social feedback (as a feed-forward mechanism) is a major primary motivator in individuals. Again, put more simply, this is the notion that if you can visualise a positive response to your work you are more likely to be motivated towards and successful in accomplishing it. This is also another reason why I think Service Design Thinking with its emphasis on visualising complexity to understand it and adapt it is so well placed to understand and promote motivation. I’d hoped that in the current era of social media and game changing, hierarchy busting, technology and given that he is speaking to a blogger for a video that is being posted on YouTube Pink might have addressed this more fully…
Either way I think this publication signals that 2010 will be the year that Motivation really hits the mainstream, similarly perhaps to how ‘Design Thinking’ hit the mainstream last year off the back of Brown and Martin’s publications. Much like with those two volumes though, one could imagine that the release of Pink’s book signals that there will be an increase in demand amongst senior management for creative and innovative practitioners who not only understand motivation but also who possess the tools to create and facilitate motivating systems, products and services.
What do you think? Do you think 2010 will be the year of motivation or are there other emerging trends and topics that trump motivation in the understanding and design for behavioural change?
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 support of his discussion of how managers might support employee Motivation, Julian leverages the same Self Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000, 2004) that has formed the basis of my own research. His coverage of the Material, Social and Personal drivers of Motivation need little further coverage as I’ve referred to them on my blog and associated discussions using Deci and Ryan’s original terms of Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence. Julian suggests that managers should utilise these three aspects of human psychological capability to help turn ‘extrinsically regulated‘ organisational objectives into ‘identified‘ personal motives of employees. In otherwords, managers should use the prospects of material, social and personal rewards to encourage employees to take ownership of organisational objectives and become more personally intrinsically rewarding. I would also supplement this with Valerand’s, (2003) definition that motivation occurs on “global, contextual and situational” levels of recursion.
As I’ve mentioned in the discussion on Wenovski a great example of an organisation doing this is Zappos, an American online retailer, that uses it’s employees to amongst other things model the clothes they sell. Specifically this example is appealing to an employee’s underlying Relatedness and Competence ‘needs’ and allowing them to fulfill those ‘needs’ on behalf of the organisation, which in turn benefits the organisation’s own Relatedness and Competence objectives, by providing customers with a familiar, down to earth and empathetic marketing touch point. Literally in this case the employee is embodying the organisation. This, if successful, and it is proving very successful for Zappos, will in the long term also enhance the organisations global Autonomy by boosting sales (the material outcome) as well as it’s social outcome (what customers think) and its personal, or personnel outcome by enhancing its relationship with its employees.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset
As one of the commenters on Unstructure Marc Buyens said, “these are not new concepts”, but I think the difference is that re-conceptualising these as motivational constructs or regulatory mechanisms can have quite a powerful effect on the way an organisation manages them. The above diagram indicates another few ways from the literature of conceptualising both how and why to target ‘management interventions’. For example, these help determine at what stage you are energising as opposed to directing employee/customer behaviour and whether or not you are doing so to instil awareness of issues or to reaffirm employee confidence or satisfaction.
Indeed, motivation is all around us, it is the root of our every behaviour and that’s a critical point I’d like to bring to this conversation, motivation whether positive or negative (demotivation) will occur whether you want it to or not. Within your organisation, your staff and colleagues, and yourself. Deci and Ryan’s theory is an organismic one, that is, it perceives that we as humans are naturally predisposed to grow and organically adapt to our environment, seeking out new challenges, responsibilities and recognition in order to fulfil these underlying psychological needs. The question to managers is perhaps best asked, not might you support motivation, but rather how are you currently regulating motivation within your organisation? How are you directing or maintaining the energisation of the behaviour in your organisation?
A very innovative approach to this I discovered yesterday, came via the Swedish TV Licensing Authority with their Tack (Thank You) campaign. Allowing individuals who upon paying their tv licences to submit a picture of themselves and be integrated to a well highly produced and aspirational “thank you” video. Actually, anyone can have a go, which does kind of undermine the point a little, but its powerful stuff – underlining the point that for managers the best way to motivate your employees is to integrate them into the middle of the organisation and allow them to take ownership and participate in the critical issues of the organisation and become an evangelist for them.
From a Self Determination perspective at least, every employee has those Personal ‘Material, Social and Competence ‘Needs” Julian mentions, fulfilment of these results in happiness for the individual. However, because of the nested and recursive nature of self determined behaviour and societies, organisations also have ‘Material, Social and Competence‘ ‘Needs’. The obvious question for managers then is how are you facilitating the fulfilment of both of these first order (happiness) and second order ‘needs’ (success) and in doing so creating a motivated, energised and purposeful organisation? As I shared on Twitter yesterday:
“Success is getting what you want (contextual/global – extrinsic). Happiness is wanting what you get (situational – intrinsic).”
Apologies for the recent blogging hiatus, in large part due to the launch last week of The Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition at the Design Museum which I have been working on over the last year and half. I’m also recently back from the excellent Nordic Service Design Conference in Oslo. I will post more on both of those things in due course. In the meantime, I’ve also been working on my MPhil in Intrinsically Motivating Design and recently developed a model that I hope to validate as a tool to help designers design Intrinsically Motivating and behaviourally self sustaining systems, services and products. I’ve posted this on Wenovski as well so apologies for the cross posting if you’ve already seen it there. I’d really welcome your feedback on this and if you have any questions or would be interested in offering me an opportunity to validate the model then give me shout either in the comments below or at hello@fergusbisset.com.
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’.
Jason Cooper (@jasecoop) fired out some quick Twitter research this afternoon inquiring after people’s perceptions of the self-service checkout machines we are increasingly faced with at supermarkets these days. These have been in the press this week as Tesco announced that it is to open it’s first ‘automated’ store in Northampton.
I have been meaning to write about these for awhile, so thanks Jase for pushing me in that direction.
M&S Self Service Checkout from jaygooby on Flickr
These machines as most of us will doubtless testify are incredibly frustrating. Not once have I ever used one without the human operator having to be summoned to remedy some sensor malfunction or barcode scanning problem. Yet, every time I see one available, even if simultaneously offered the option of a human operator I seem inexplicably drawn to the automatic machine and it’s purgatorial system processes.
Apart from a potential underlying masochistic streak, the only logical explanation I can find is that it is the perception that it will save me time (efficiency) that drives me to persist with these things. Doubtless this is the win for Tesco too. Yet, no sooner have I pressed it’s big green greasy start button and started scanning than it fails to register me place one of my items in the ‘bagging area’. This usually results in a near instant increase in blood pressure and me swearing blind I’ll never use one again.
Indeed, it is always an issue with the ‘bagging area’ on these machines – with either the sensor not registering that you have placed the item there after scanning it or the sensor detecting that somehow there is “an unidentified item in the bagging area.” In either eventuality it stalls and requires someone to come and prod your shopping or swipe their golden keycard until it is satisfied again. Urghh – even thinking about it makes me tense. No wonder that some of the responses that Jason’s questions were generating this afternoon on these machines were strong in their tone.
From a motivational design perspective however, these machines should really be a hands down winner, as I discussed here and again yesterday. The literature would suggest that anything that promotes our autonomy – our ability to do our shopping ourself, should be a strong motivational tool. The fact that at least until this week in Northampton, customers had a choice between machine and human was also a strong piece of motivational design as it offered otherwise inclined service users the chance to further their relatedness (social) goals for the shopping experience. If they preferred to have someone scan their shopping for them instead of scan their own shopping autonomously.
As I perceive it where these ’self-service’ checkouts fall down at the moment is in how they fail to fulfil our competence needs. Every time the sensor fails or the barcode is dirty or scratched, we can’t help but take it personally. The machine and it’s support processes make us feel incompetent. Not so much the fact it doesn’t work, as Eddie Izzard highlights brilliantly that has always been a integral part of supermarket shopping.
No, its the fact that in the majority of these ‘problem’ situations we require some other (usually slouching and disinterested) bod to come and fix it for us that these machines leave us feeling so drained and bitter. Further, it is the fact that they usually have to do this three or four times in one transaction that makes us want to burn effigies of the things. And yet next time round, and for me at least, the allure of autonomously being able to scan my own shopping is enough to suck me back into it’s beeping, monotone voiced vortex.
How could all this be made better then? Well, I’m quite keen to open that question up to you…I also kind of think that this is what Jase is away working on right now…
But, first things first Tesco could sort that ‘bagging area’ sensor out, either by eliminating it completely and demonstrating a bit more trust that users aren’t going to scan one item whilst sneaking others into their bags – surely that sort of behaviour is far more effectively prevented by the humans in Tesco’s employ. Indeed the more I reflect on it, this really seems like a engineering function (feedback process) that looked great on the system flowchart and in the product presentation pitch but that simply is not up to the demands of real world, non-expert operation. Probably as a result of a complete and utter lack of real world testing prior to installation, and the fact that the product development process clearly doesn’t accommodate an iterative design process or user feedback even now the product is in operation.
Most of all, and the biggest design issue from a Motivational Design point of view, is the fact that when this flawed functionality inevitably fails, the staff should look us in the eye and explain to us why the machine is having this problem as they solve it for us. Such increased transparency (or supported user skill and knowledge acquisition) will empower users to at least feel like they understand the technology a bit better. Such understanding or ‘mental model’ will help users in the event of a problem feel superior and more capable than the machine. Such an enhanced perception of capability will help restore a little of the behavioural equilibrium within the human-product interaction and ensure that we are just as motivated next time we visit to use the self-service systems. This is indeed, the paradox of automation – the more automated a process the more we rely on non-automated components of the system. Its also why all the unions, consumers groups and sensationalist press should stop their moaning about the so-called “death of the supermarket operator”.
In summary, if Tesco plan to introduce these machines nationwide, they will have to take a more holistic view of the service these machines are supposed to provide as well as realising the fundamental role that their human staff play in ensuring a smooth and seamless consumer experience.
What do you think? How would you redesign these machines to motivate more people to use them?
My research around the past couple of posts on participatory processes and the responses they have generated have helped focus my attention on an issue that has interested me for some time – the question of “User Needs”.
As the above video nicely represents, many of the early proponents or more successful marketers of ‘design thinking’ have often backhandedly justified the core value that ‘design thinking’ represents in terms of how it better fulfils ‘user needs’. Or at their most honest like in the video above (around 1min in), justified design thinking as the process of converting ‘needs’ to ‘demands’.
In reading and writing about Design, I can’t help but stumble across the term ‘user needs’, without ever finding a particularly compelling definition of what it is in any given context, let alone independent of context.
Having seen that horrible video above a few weeks ago and blown off a bit of steam on Wenovski about it at the time – I couldn’t help but be reminded of it when I read this rather cynical, but actually quite apt historical review of the term ‘user needs’ in a psychology paper today:
“A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force that organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation.” (Murray, 1938, pp. 123–124 in Deci and Ryan, 2000).
Aneed is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical
concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical
nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a
force that organizes perception, apperception,
intellection, conation and action in such a way as to
transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying
situation. (pp. 123–124).
As a designer who over the past few years has done quite a bit of rummaging around in psychology books and papers, perhaps with a view to fulfilling some of my own user needs and requirements!? The issue of ‘needs’ whether psychological or physiological is a term that again crops up quite a lot. I’ve long personally held the suspicion that the designerly version of “user needs” was somehow different from the social scientist’s. However, if Murray as cited above is to be believed the term may be used as indiscriminately and cynically in psychology circles as it seems in design circles.
I’m not for a minute disputing that user needs are a real and important driver of both the work of designers and psychologists alike. I wholeheartedly believe that there are designers out there who strive to cater for genuine user needs and requirements. But if so what are they? Do we have a consistent definition amongst us that isn’t just a justification for making things in a way that people will want to buy them?
Is the whole concept of user needs a smokescreen behind which designers just do whatever they want and take your money in the process?
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this so please either tweet them to me @fergusbisset or use the comments box below to let me know what you think. It’ll really help my Masters research into Motivational Design and judging by the video above it might even help our integrity as a community.
Lauren’s Flickr photos also give you an insight into the week. Whilst thoughts on the week, particularly the conference on Monday, from one of the keynote presenters Nico Morelli can also be found here.
I’m going to elaborate some of my own thoughts from the presentations on Monday in subsequent posts, particularly the presentations of Arne and Marc and that of Renato Troncon on the role of aesthetics and philosophy in Service Design. However, in the rest of this post I want to share some pictures and a brief summary of the workshop I was participating in.
The workshop was run by Arne, Marc and Mikko Koivisto co-editor of the book Designing Services With Innovative Methods. Whilst the primary aim of the workshop was to empower attendees in their understanding and use of service design methods, the chosen context in which to do so was a local health care clinic in the town of Kuopio where the workshop was being held.
Patients at the Viretori Clinic
This clinic known as the Viretori, provides elderly people the opportunity to come and receive basic health care checks, administered by students at the University thus serving as a training and educational service for students as well as providing a medical one for elderly members of the community.
Educational and Healthcare Services All in a Oner!!
The identified problem was with a lack of engagement in services offered by the clinic to the elderly people of the town. This of course was having a knock on effect on the students education and motivation to participate in the initiative.
One of the exciting features of the workshop was the opportunity to explore Marc Stickdorn and his colleagues at MCI’s new mobile based tool for logging customer journeys. This Android based software allows you to log and rate touch points as you walk through the journey, then download them and catalogue them when you are back in the studio – really innovative and exciting stuff!
Using MCI's ServiceFellow Mobile Service Touchpoint Logging Software
It wasn’t all hi-tech though, with traditional methods and collaboration very much the point of the exercise. These were a great opportunity to get to know our Finnish hosts better as well as get to know the meriad of nationalities attending the conference courtesy of the Nokia Only Planet project.
Plotting User Journeys the old fashioned post-it note way!
The one and half day workshop culminated with the presentation of the group’s concept, which following interviews and observation of the users and service environment suggested empowering the elderly users with more ownership of the clinic, it’s presentation and activities. Our recommendations and reflections on the process were presented to all the conference participants on the final day and will also be put to the management of the clinic in the near future.
Presenting the Results (courtesy of Marc Stickdorn)
Altogether the week was an immensly enjoyable one, both for the networking opportunities it presented and new friends made, but also for the chance to explore service design within a hugely diverse group and learn from the results. Thanks again to all those involved.
Certified... (Again courtesy Marc Stickdorn)
I’ll be posting some further thoughts from the Kuopio experience in due course.
I’ve been mulling over Robert Fabricant’s ‘Ethnographic Defense’ post from the beginning of the week. Mulling because when I first read it I got quite worked up and decided to leave it until I’d calmed down a bit. I’ve just now (via @fredcollopy) seen another eerly similar article by Fabricant on Core77 and felt I had to respond on behalf all designers who believe in empowering rather than diminishing their users:
“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 awareof 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 relevantinvolves 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.
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.
Our ATTENTION to and RELEVANCE of a message, determine people’s perceptions of its VALUE whilst an individual’s CONFIDENCE will determine their expectancy for success and their perceptions of CONTROL and SATISFACTION.
Whilst the emotionally charged sharing of news and updates is critical for raising AWARENESS or generating ATTENTION amongst potential supporters, in order to induce motivated behaviour parallel strategies need to be introduced to support both those sending the messages and guiding the individuals responses towards a specific short or long term goal. In it’s simplest manifestation this could include feedback on the number of times a particular piece of news has been linked to / read / retweeted, thus through feedback, motivating users that their voice is being heard.
Indeed, this has had a more literal and physical manifestation in the recent Iranian situation as this haunting and beautiful video demonstrates:
Such feedback is hugely valuable in combatting feelings of frustration or at their most extreme a feeling of learned helplessness – which is to say the sentiment that “nothing I do is ever going to make a difference.” But in this situation this is not didactic feedback from ‘a system’ to the user. The system in question here both online and offline are ’social’ and enable users themselves to feedback to, inform and support each other. As Arne Oosterom elegantly put it a week or so back:
@designthinkers: “service designers should provide people with tools to self-organize around a common interest.”
How far can we as designers design in features that combat learned helplessness? As Nick Marsh highlighted yesterday in reference to this article;
@choosenick: ”People don’t think like the state: “I don’t have ‘needs’, I have something to give.”
Again there are a number of strategies for designers addressing ‘learned helplessness’, something that might also be referred to as demotivated behaviour. How many of these can be wrapped up by changing your focus to design dialectic as opposed to didactic systems.
