Behavior: Basic Psychology of the User - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 110

nervous system: if someone blows a puff of air into your eyes, for example, you
automatically blink. We have no conscious control over these sorts of actions.
The second reason is where people make a deliberate decision to perform a
particular act. One of the influencing factors that determines not only their action,
but how well they perform it is their motivation: motivation is something that drives
behavior. It cannot be used as a singular explanation for why people do things,
however, because behavior is also influenced by needs, incentives, expectations,
and the presence of conflicting motivations, as well as unconscious factors.
Motivation is usually considered from three aspects: the physiological, the
behavioral, and the psycho-social. Here we provide a brief introductory overview,
so that you can start to understand why an individual user behaves in a particular
way. This may be particularly useful if you are designing gaming software, for
example, where you want to keep the user engaged by providing the appropriate
motivation for them to carry on playing. We will return to the topic of motivation
in Chap. 8 to discuss how it plays out in team settings.
4.7.2 Maslow's Hierarchical Theory
Perhaps the best known theory of motivation is Abraham Maslow's ( 1943 )
Hierarchy of Needs. The simplest way to visualize the hierarchy is as a pyramid as
shown in Fig. 4.19 , although Maslow never presented a figure.
At the bottom of the pyramid are the basic, physiological human needs like
breathing, food, sleep, and excretion. These are fundamental to human existence.
Above that, in order, are safety, love and belonging, and esteem, with self-actu-
alization at the very top. Each level requires that the level below it be mostly
satisfied. Maslow also believed in what he called metamotivation—the motivation
of people for continual personal improvement.
People are orienting towards, and try to satisfy, more than one of these levels at
the same time. It is likely that motivations that appear lower in the pyramid will
dominate those that appear at a higher level (e.g., eating when you are hungry or
going to the bathroom when you feel the need would likely win out over doing
something to improve your self-esteem). Whilst there have been many theories of
motivation proposed since Maslow's, his basic ideas remain popular.
4.7.3 Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
The basic needs—those towards the bottom of Fig. 4.19 —are met for designers
and many users, so the higher level needs are the focus of attention from our
perspective. In his book, Drive, Pink ( 2009 ) presents a summary of motivational