Social: Social Cognition and Teamwork - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 240

Pink ( 2009 ) notes that many organizations still use extrinsic motivation theory,
and argues that this approach frequently violates what psychological science is
telling us. He suggests that what motivates people to participate without payment
in these activities and communities is intrinsic motivation, noting that it is more
important than extrinsic motivation for many tasks. It is not the perfect panacea,
however, and he provides several counter examples of tasks where intrinsic
motivation either fails or is not possible.
In community settings, many people get involved in their own time, and without
any form of payment. In many ways, although they comprise a community, their
motivation is invariably individualistic. These people are intrinsically motivated by
the drives of autonomy, mastery, and purpose, as noted in Chap. 4 . The tasks that
they are doing are intrinsically rewarding, so people should not be given extrinsic
rewards for doing them. The intrinsic drives need to be supported through providing
feedback (positive and negative to help with mastery), and now-that rewards which
only occasionally happen. These should not be monetary in order to minimize the
likelihood of discouraging or discounting the user's intrinsic motivations to perform
the task. The rewards might provide further autonomy, notes, and recognition about
mastery, or emphasize the purpose that was served. Alternatively, make any
extrinsic rewards a token: many $1 payments for patents get framed and saved, for
example, in recognition of a job well done.
8.5 Implications for System Design
Teamwork is highly dependent on communication and collaboration. The team
will often need to share information, for example, so that team members can use it
to make individual and collective decisions. It is therefore important that your
system supports both communication—of both information and outcomes—and
collaboration. This may require the use of tools and technologies that are not an
inherent part of your designed system, such as video communication. We used
Skype as well as email during the writing of this topic, for example, to allow the
three authors in three different time zones to communicate and share ideas both
synchronously and asynchronously.
Group decision making aids typically incorporate features to reduce bad effects
and increase good effects of group decision making. These features often include a
brain storming session, and anonymizing users counter the effects of hierarchy
(organizational power) so that more ideas can be generated without the leader
explicitly or implicitly affecting what people are willing to say.
As we have noted throughout the chapters in this topic, most systems nowadays
are socio-technical systems. In other words, there is a social system that needs to be
considered because the technology and the social system will be interdependent and
interact. If you do not spend time and effort understanding the existing social system,
you run the risk of adversely affecting it. For example, if staff have to spend more
time on maintaining and interacting directly with the new technology rather than on