A model for describing when an individual will be suitably motivated to act.

We encounter many triggers to action. Sometimes we act, and heed the call to action, sometimes we don’t. This framework attempts to describe the circumstances under which an individual may be motivated to enact a behaviour.

The Fogg Behaviour Model was published by Dr. BJ Fogg in 2009 and revised in 2010. Dr Fogg founded the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, where he directs research in “Behaviour Design”: a systematised way of changing human behaviour.

#The model

B=mat

In a given context a behaviour (B) occurs when there is sufficient motivation (m), a trigger (t) is experienced and they have sufficient ability (a).  To put it another way: The individual needs to be sufficiently motivated to act when prompted — if the cost is not too great.

Motivation

The factors that may cause an individual to act.

• Pleasure / Pain
• Hope / Fear
• Social acceptance / Rejection

Levels of motivation are not constant and come in waves: People are keener to diet having watched an inspiring programme about a new diet (hope) rather than when they are grocery shopping a hangover (pain). Peaks of motivation are rare and present a great opportunity to promote future engagement.

Trigger

Prompts an action. The action prompted should be tailored to the ease with which the user can take it and their level of motivation.

• High motivation : Low ability. Provide a lightweight way for the individual to engage with you at some level. They may be short of time but keen to try your service so maybe get them to sign up for a newsletter / launch update email.
• Low motivation : High ability. Provide a high level of incentive/motivation to get your potential user over the hump. Maybe a bit of social proof combined with a time limited offer will encourage action. The greater the incentive the more you can potentially ask of the user.
• High motivation : High ability. If we feel that the user is be highly motivated this is the time to make a big ask that will structure future behaviour, or reduce the barriers to it. This could be something like setting up and personalising your account, arranging an appointment or similar.

Ability

The scarcity or abundance of the following resources in the given context:

• Time
• Money
• Physical Effort
• Mental Effort
• Social Deviance – Is this a socially accepted behaviour?
• Routine – Doing something for the first time will have some attendant cost in terms of time to get set-up, getting your head around it etc.

#Examples

#Less Motivation : Greater Ability

For example Jenny is a designer and she sees some new design software that will be released soon. The software looks like it has potential, and may prove useful. She isn’t hugely motivated however and is undecided about whether to invest time and attention learning more about it. Because the effort involved in being notified when it launches very low – just enter your email address – she decides to go ahead and give them her email.

The marketers have succeeded despite not being able to offer any great motivation because they made the cost of action so low. If they had asked Jenny to fill out a longer form they may not have succeeded because the cost in terms of cognitive effort and time required may have tipped the scales too far for the motivation to have been sufficient.

#More Motivation : Less Ability

Company X has a caption competition running on their website; the prize is an iPad. In order to to enter a competitor must like Company X on Facebook and then fill out an entry form that requires you to think up a witty caption.

The cost is quite high:

• Time: It requires a at least a couple of minutes to be invested in the process, more if a witty caption does not spring to mind.
• Mental effort: You cannot simply click a button or just enter an email address. In order to win the competition a degree of inventiveness will be required.
• Social Deviance: You will be publicly liking Company X. This may well appear in your friends timelines. Will you lose friends or respect by spamming them with a corporate like?

If the trigger catches you at the right time the motivation may be high enough to persuade you to stop what you were doing, risk social stigma, and put some thought into winning this valuable prize.

#Further reading & viewing

• Video: BJ Fogg at PARC on how to really change your habits
• behaviourmodel.org
• Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

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#The pursuit of pleasure

Canadian born anthropologist Dr Lionel Tiger published a book in 1992 entitled ‘The pursuit of pleasure’. The book discusses pleasure and the part that it has played in evolution and survival.

The ideas have subsequently been popularised and developed by Patrick Jordan as the ‘Four Pleasure Framework’ and are widely used in product design. Donald Norman also draws upon the ideas in his book ‘Emotional Design’.

In the book he proposes a Four Pleasure model that categorises the four broad types of pleasure enjoyed by people:

• Physio-pleasure
• Psycho-pleasure
• Socio-pleasure
• Ideo-pleasure

Physio-pleasure

Physio-pleasure is a sensual pleasure that is derived from touching, smelling, hearing and tasting something. It also conveyed by an object’s effectiveness in performing the action for which it is designed.

#Examples of physio-pleasure

Some magazines (I’m thinking of Eye Magazine) have both a wonderful texture due to the quality of the paper stock combined with a fantastic smell as you open it’s pages. Leather goods have a similar effect – more for some than others.

A refined and well engineered tool such as a Wüsthof cooks knife has a pleasing heft and balance that is noted immediately upon using the tool. It also conveys a pleasure to the user of being highly effective — making light work of the often mundane tasks for which it is employed.

When we close a car door and it makes a satisfying clunk we experience a certain pleasure. This is a combination of the acoustic feedback that the door is definitely closed, combined with an aesthetic enjoyment of the sound itself. The sound will have been engineered to produce this response.

Psycho-pleasure

Psycho-pleasures are pleasures that are derived from cognition, discovery, knowledge, and other things that satisfy the intellect.

#Examples of psycho-pleasure

The first time that you pick up an iPod/iPhone/iPad and start playing with it you quickly get an idea of how it works. Even if you don’t get it straight away, it is learnable, memorable and pretty consistent — you soon get to know the ropes. This leads to a certain sense of satisfaction because, largely, ‘it just works’.

Games are enjoyable because they present challenges that we need to figure out. Whether finishing the Rubik’s cube, or achieving checkmate in a few moves, there is a cognitive-emotional pleasure that is derived from such activities.

Horizon is one of my favourite programs. The reason that I enjoy it so much is because I get to discover new ideas and expand my mind with thoughts of m-theory and other crazy science. I may not wholly, or indeed even partially, understand it but I do enjoy the act of thinking about it.

Socio-pleasure

Socio-pleasures, as the name suggests, are concerned with pleasures derived from social signifiers of belonging, social-enablers and other social self-identification factors.

#Examples of socio-pleasure

Facebook is a tool that enables people to have a greater sense of community and involvement with one another. Often geographically disparate friends can still retain a foothold in one another’s lives.
For most web designers, especially a few years ago, owning an iPhone was more or less de rigeur in the same way that a Blackberry is for crack dealers and bankers.

At school, wearing a pair of Adidas-like ‘one stripe too many’ trainers in PE would lead to mockery. No-one was suggesting that the shoes were of a lesser quality, simply that they said you were too poor or socially unaware to have the ‘proper’ ones.

Certain objects or features provide a talking point, a sense of identity, a way to differentiate and create a starting point for dialogue. This could be a Mohican, an audiophile sound system or a folly that you have built on your estate.

Ideo-pleasure

Ideo-pleasures then are pleasures that are linked to our ideals, aesthetically, culturally and otherwise.

#Examples of ideo-pleasure

I have a mug from Ikea. It is largely unremarkable and utilitarian, however I always glean a small moment of ideo-pleasure when I wash it and place on the draining rack as it has a really elegant design feature. It has grooves scored into the base so that all of the water on the base runs off when it is placed upside down. Lesser mugs pool this water, often leading to a suprise when the mug is taken from the draining rack. This reflects my own ideological standpoint that everything can be made better, often through very small and elegant changes.

Aesthetic sensibilities are often closely linked to our ideological or cultural identity and determine to a great extent the pleasure a product may bring. Many people that get a great deal of pleasure from driving VW camper vans. They are often impractical, unreliable and relatively expensive in comparison to other vehicles that offer greater utility.

There is a clear business case for producing local/green/fair-trade produce as people derive pleasure from ethical shopping. Hence all of the heritage-style, Clarendon on matte-finish packaged products that reflect a faux-traditional, good old days aesthetic.

#See also:

http://www.uigarden.net/english/design-for-the-dream-economy

http://www.chi2008.org/altchisystem/submissions/submission_jane66_0.pdf

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