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Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign leveraged a deeply inspiring message and image during a time of economic and political upheaval.
The Budweiser ad in figure 5 illustrates how the beer company uses the motivator of social cohesion by displaying three pals (“buds”) cheering for their national team.
While internal triggers are the frequent, everyday itch experienced by users, the right motivators create action by offering the promise of desirable outcomes (i.e., a satisfying scratch).
What’s missing in this equation? Usability—or rather, the ability of the user to take action easily.
Hauptly’s formula
“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time … Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”
Fogg Behavior Model, ability is the capacity to do a particular behavior
To increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur, Fogg instructs designers to focus on simplicity as a function of the user’s scarcest resource at that moment.
“What is the thing that is missing that would allow my users to proceed to the next step?”
The action phase of the Hook Model incorporates Fogg’s six elements of simplicity by asking designers to consider how their technology can facilitate the simplest actions in anticipation of reward. The easier an action, the more likely the user is to do it and to continue the cycle through the next phase of the Hook Model.
The company continues to relentlessly improve its search engine by finding new ways to remove whatever might be in the user’s way—no
The company made the camera app directly launchable from the locked screen, without requiring a password.
Pinterest, is the infinite scroll.
After uncovering the triggers that prompt user actions and deciding which actions you want to turn into habits, you can increase motivation and ability to spark the likelihood of your users taking a desired behavior.
Influencing behavior by reducing the effort required to perform an action is more effective than increasing someone’s desire to do it.
The company made the desired action as simple as possible, knowing that getting users to experience the service would yield better results than trying to persuade them to use it while still on the home page.
In 2009 the Twitter home page attempted to boost motivation; by 2012 Twitter had discovered that no matter how much users knew about the service, driving them to open an account and start following people resulted in much higher engagement.
There are many counterintuitive and surprising ways companies can boost users’ motivation or increase their ability by understanding heuristics—the mental shortcuts we take to make decisions and form opinions.
The Scarcity Effect
The study showed that a product can decrease in perceived value if it starts off as scarce and becomes abundant.
The Framing Effect
The mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.
measure if price had any influence on the taste of wine.
The Anchoring Effect
People often anchor to one piece of information when making a decision.
The Endowed Progress Effect
The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal.
Stephen Anderson, author of Seductive Interaction Design, created a tool called Mental Notes to help designers build better products through heuristics.13
reward your users by solving a problem, reinforcing their motivation for the action taken in the previous phase.
nucleus accumbens.1
In fact, we now know other things that feel good also activate the same neural region. Sex, delicious food, a bargain, and even our digital devices all tap into this deep recess of the brain, providing the impetus for many of our behaviors.
The startling results showed that the nucleus accumbens was not activating when the reward (in this case a monetary payout) was received, but rather in anticipation of it.
Without variability we are like children in that once we figure out what will happen next, we become less excited by the experience.
To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.
Our brains have evolved over millennia to help us figure out how things work. Once we understand causal relationships, we...
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More recent experiments reveal that variability increases activity in the nucleus accumbens and spikes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, driving our hungry search for rewards.6
Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.
Bandura determined that people who observe someone being rewarded for a particular behavior are more likely to alter their own beliefs and subsequent actions.
Honor Points (
The system gave players the ability to award points for particularly sportsmanlike conduct worthy of recognition.
evidence shows that these weapons were only invented five hundred thousand years ago,13 whereas we’ve been eating meat for over 2 million years.14 How, then, did we hunt during the first 75 percent of our existence?
During the chase, the runner is driven by the pursuit itself; this same mental hardwiring also provides clues into the source of our insatiable desires today.
Although it is a long way from bushmen to businessmen, the mental processes of the hunt remain largely the same.
The need to acquire physical objects, such as food and other supplies that aid our survival, is part of our brain’s operating system.
online pinboarding site is a virtual smorgasbord of objects of desire.
We are driven to conquer obstacles, even if just for the satisfaction of doing so.
many habit-forming technologies begin as vitamins—nice-to-have products that, over time, become must-have painkillers by relieving an itch or pain.
Wherever new technologies suddenly make a behavior easier, new possibilities are born.
Many companies have found success in driving new habit formation by identifying how changing user interactions can create new routines.
